Steve Smart
Found Asemics
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Bio:
Steve Smart is a poet and visual artist living in a rural part of the east of Scotland. His creative interests are eclectic and he has collaborated with artists, performers and researchers across a wide range of fields. Steve trained in both science and in art, and scientific research is often a source of inspiration, as is sculptural form in landscape and the natural world. Walking forms a key stimulus for much of his work. Recent projects have included work in poetry film, in 2023 the film collaboration Velella velella was shortlisted for the inaugural Scottish Landscape Awards, and was a finalist at the Ó Bhéal Poetry Film Competition. |
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Artist Statement:
I first encountered asemic as an idea about 2020. I was immediately drawn to the visual aesthetic of work inviting a viewer to hover somewhere between reading and looking. It seemed very cryptic, and at the same time often very visceral. I enjoyed the breadth of artwork that falls under the umbrella of asemic. I do like that sense of a ‘broad church’ - in art, much as I do in poetry. From many asemic works I gain a feeling of the path of a movement traced. Often I feel a kind of kinaesthetic empathy - my hand and arm wanting to move along with a past performance of mark making. Even if a specific meaning is not enfolded in that movement, a feeling certainly can be.
I’ve called the images that are here ‘found asemic’. They embody a strand of seeing that emerged from my landscape photography. I think the name is fairly self explanatory - photographs of found elements that resonate with a perception of script-like or character-like forms. These images are often connected with that sense of an imagined prior movement – the result, perhaps, of some uncertain and intangible flow of chaotic intent. That intuition of some dynamic, even passionate, dancing cursive, swept out through both space and time.
As always - I hope that these images bring you joy.
I first encountered asemic as an idea about 2020. I was immediately drawn to the visual aesthetic of work inviting a viewer to hover somewhere between reading and looking. It seemed very cryptic, and at the same time often very visceral. I enjoyed the breadth of artwork that falls under the umbrella of asemic. I do like that sense of a ‘broad church’ - in art, much as I do in poetry. From many asemic works I gain a feeling of the path of a movement traced. Often I feel a kind of kinaesthetic empathy - my hand and arm wanting to move along with a past performance of mark making. Even if a specific meaning is not enfolded in that movement, a feeling certainly can be.
I’ve called the images that are here ‘found asemic’. They embody a strand of seeing that emerged from my landscape photography. I think the name is fairly self explanatory - photographs of found elements that resonate with a perception of script-like or character-like forms. These images are often connected with that sense of an imagined prior movement – the result, perhaps, of some uncertain and intangible flow of chaotic intent. That intuition of some dynamic, even passionate, dancing cursive, swept out through both space and time.
As always - I hope that these images bring you joy.