Untitled (2010), C-Type print, 25” x 20”, Edition 1/5
After graduating with a Photography BA (Hons) from London College of Communication Tim Smyth has been a regular exhibitor at Son Gallery. He also contributes photography to several editorials and has worked internationally for New Exposure and locally in North London for All Change, collectives using photography, amongst other art forms, to highlight social issues. He was the winner of the Hotshoe Student Award and most recently has been awarded a residency in Spoleto by the Anna Mahler International Association.
Underlying his photographic work is a strong social conscience. In 2008, with New Exposure, he produced a series entitled Lumi / Peka (River / River) in Mitrovica, Kosovo. He sensitively documented Kosovan Albanians and Serbian populations, divided by a bridge over the Ibar, sharing the pleasure of the river. Set amongst the landscape, however, are signs of distinct national alliances that fortify the underlying tension and resentment towards past conflict.
Other projects with New Exposure have taken Tim to Turkey and Syria. His fine art photography stems from his experiences in the documentary genre but tends towards complicating subjects through abstraction and aestheticising. His series Nature of Machines which depicts surfaces of car wrecks found in breakers yards. His interest in these surfaces was a culmination of cycling on dangerous roads in London, being hit by a car and witnessing a car overturning on a motorway. In the photographs he isolates areas of impact which are evidence of human error and misjudgment or unforeseen mechanical failure. His most recent work, which will be developed in Spoleto, stems from an ongoing interest in food as a cultural product. His Local series was made whilst he was living and working in a Gastro Pub in London. He photographed the visual dialogues that occurred throughout the building between its eight inhabitants, the staff and clientele. The series Surplus of Choice, in which the artist rearranges food found in dustbins for the camera, responds to a distaste for the wastefulness of consumer society. One Hundred and Thirty Nine Defective Carrots is another series, documenting market perceived food deficiencies, which addresses choice and value in food culture.
