Laree Payne Gallery to debut prominent new addition to its stable

Hamilton gallery Laree Payne has acquired another outstanding artist for its stable, with Auckland-based artist Sarah Smuts-Kennedy now added to their lineup. This marks a new chapter in an already had a long and successful career, with the artist’s practice already spanning more than twenty years.

A multidisciplinary artist, she currently has a focus on sculpture and pastel on paper in order to evoke complex energy fields, with research forming the basis of her aesthetic investigations. An exhibition text written by curator Christina Barton about her exhibition at Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery explains that Smuts-Kennedy “suspends conscious decision-making in favour of attuning herself to the invisible energies inherent in her environs. These are held in her works between a palpable spaciousness, an openness and poise, and points of tension and concentrated gesture. Together these convey the humming shimmer of the physical world, in both its immaterial and material dimensions.”

Alongside her upcoming exhibition at Sydney Contemporary with the gallery, the artist has been the subject of a number of solo exhibitions across New Zealand and Australia, and has shown internationally in India and Korea. She has twice been a finalist in the Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award, and her works can be found in eminent collections including that of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Wollongong Regional Art Gallery, Newcastle Regional Art Gallery, Art Bank, Deutsche Bank, and the Macquarie Group Collection.

Laree Payne Gallery will exhibit the artist’s new work at its presentation at Sydney Contemporary later this year.