Contemporary Australia: Women

131 Artists Dolls (various, details) 2011–12 Synthetic polymer paint and ink on canvas and fabric with wood, cardboard and various collage elements Installed dimensions variable Opposite Die Dada Puppen (detail) 1998–99 Synthetic polymer paint on fabric and wood with various assemblage elements Studio installation view Photograph: Gary Ireland Image courtesy: The artist is deeply entrenched as a cultural signifier for the female body, with its representations and stereotypes of feminine norms. 4 Smart has stated that, ‘the history of feminist art and its connection to performance art is well documented and my work is successor to that movement’. 5 Her art is also conceptually informed by the content and processes of choreography and choreographers, particularly revolutionary choreographer Martha Graham (1894–1991). Graham brought a different dynamic to dance — sharp angles and natural motions that heighten the awareness of life. The disorderly perspectives of Smart’s puppets echo this energetic dynamic, and Smart continues to reference her influences with one doll titled Artists Dolls #6 Balance (MARTHA) 2011–12 . Indeed, Smart’s puppets literally dance in the exhibition space. Sally Smart’s art practice is informed by feminist art history and the themes of her works relate to our corporal existence. By revisiting the avant-garde modernists, and particularly Dada women artists, Smart is revealing and celebrating these early neo‑feminist experiments. In re-examining themes and approaches of past avant-garde female artists, Smart creates her own unique work that richly resonates with the past. Michael Hawker In 1918, Sophie Taeuber created a series of beautifully stylised and often gender‑specific marionettes for which she used a range of materials including wood, metal, textiles, feathers (to make a prince) and pearls (to make a princess). They were created for a production of Carlo Gozzi’s The King Stag (1918) at the Théâtre Zurichois de Marionnettes. Rather than modelled like a human figure, the marionettes are not to scale, limbs and bodies are out of proportion and composed of basic geometric shapes, using materials such as cylinders, pins and balls. Smart similarly employs geometric shapes on various scales, though her figures use more diverse materials. Hannah Höch has long been acknowledged for her contributions to the core dada technique of photomontage. 3 Her depictions of fragmented female bodies, cut from popular magazine photographs and drawings, contrast starkly with more idealised representations of the female figure in the history of Western art, and make her work of particular interest to feminist scholars and artists. Smart’s assemblages have the fragmented appearance not only of Höch’s dolls but also her photomontage. Like Taeuber, Höch had studied at an arts and crafts college and often referenced the handmade patterns familiar in women’s domestic arts. Her dolls were made by haphazardly sewing fabrics, making them appear clownish and outlandish. Thus, they caricature ‘the doll’, which Sally Smart