Brenton Alexander Smith’s practice emerged from his interest in human machine relationships. His work explores the point of connection and disconnection between humans and technology in the cycle of technological renewal. His early works were informed by ideas of the cyborg, drawing on Donna Harraway’s assertion that we are all cyborgs through our codependence with technology. These works saw the cyborg as entropic forms, hybrid creatures that struggle to sustain a functioning coexistence with their human and technological parts.
Smith’s practice has since shifted to the plight of the machines themselves, with the image of humans reduced to a ghostly residue. The machine and human are seen as co-evolving entities and not strictly two parts of the same being. The car crash has become a central theme and example of a disrupted human machine relationship in Smith’s recent work. The residue of car accidents acts as a sculptural material to create works that echo the organic through mechanical forms. They are part relic and part creature, inert yet imbued with a faint sense of life.
Smith graduated from the Sydney College of the Arts with honours in 2014. Since then he has completed an artist residency in north Iceland, where he held his first solo exhibition at the Akureyri Art Museum. Smith also received the Freedman Foundation Travelling scholarship in 2014.
