Eli Smith

Eli was born in Perth on the 16th of April 1973. As a child he taught himself to draw to impress his friends. Starting with cars, copying sporting team logos, heavy metal posters and gruesome fantasy scenes he improved his skills and understanding of image making. The figurative aspect of his practice started with these early sketches and has developed into a love of representational image making. The power of confrontational images was also apparent to him from an early age and in his work to date he has embraced the notion of 'poking the viewer with a stick' to elicit a response. Sometime it's a gentle nudge and sometime it's a blow to the head.

Eli is currently working on two separate series; both set to provoke an analysis of the viewer's preconceived responses to potentially controversial imagery. One is built around people's relationship to masculine aggression and the other about relationship boundaries.

In the immediate future Eli's practice is firmly rooted in the exploration of personal and social boundaries. As for the longer term he is content to follow his areas of interest as they arise.

www.elismith.com

 Curriculum Vitae