Leon Polk Smith

Focusing on paintings and works on paper from the 1950s exclusively, the exhibition will chart a key moment within Smith’s artistic career in which his signature visual language of his work began to manifest, reflective both of prevalent trends of the time but also infused with the specifics of his own identity. This will be an occasion to celebrate a series of wide-ranging readings of his work looking beyond the strictly Euro-centric appreciation of his place within hard-edge modernist abstraction to encompass other considerations of specific contemporary concern surrounding context, time and identity.

Comprising around forty works, the exhibition and associated publication will create a timely opportunity to re-evaluate Smith’s place not only within the Western canon but within a contemporary context and meaning creating an unexpected place for an artist of Indigenous background within the notionally white Modernist tradition.

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