Artwork

Treating motion as a material, Smart creates precarious physical constructions which often explore how inanimate objects can be perceived as living beings. 

Over three decades of puppetry work have infused Smart’s artistic practice and engagement with the physical world.  “Puppetry and sculpture are both ways of representing the body”. Smart remarks, “my work is all about how artworks communicate directly with the viewer by virtue of their physical presence. It investigates how we relate to objects that share the same space as us and our ability to experience empathy physically.”

Smart’s attention to the ever-present movement of the natural world, has led him to create artworks which rely on analogue mechanisms; shifting, rotating, and moving autonomously. They often mimic bodily movement, bringing inanimate objects into a state of being, through human interaction or air flow. While motion deliberately introduces a chance element into his work, Smart’s kinetic sculptures are precisely calibrated arrangements, probing the delicate state of equilibrium between “precision and crudeness” – a duality that according to Smart characterises all of us.

Dragonfly Imago, a mechanical prototype of a dragonfly perched on a clunky plywood structure, embodies this tension. Rendering the biomechanics of insect flight with surprising  life-like precision, the piece is a result of years of studying, drawing and observing the dragonflies that live near Smart’s studio, by the River Lee. The artwork evolved through numerous iterations, from small sketches and models to the final, large-scale kinetic installation, incorporating the process of creation into the actual work. Smart’s practice often navigates shifting scales, moving between microscopic details and expansive, macroscopic views. “I’m fascinated by my body’s relationship to the object. If the object is tiny, I have a completely different response to it than if it is massive.” Smart’s creative process encourages him to play with scale in a variety of contexts, liberated from practical constraints.

Using found objects to create a representation of the natural world, Smart often combines organic and engineered materials, scavenged, modest objects, with precise mechanical structures. Discarded industrial materials, such as rope, twine, wood and wire, are carefully arranged and transformed into intricate compositions evocative of natural organisms.

The wild landscape of Smart’s native Aotearoa (the Maori name for New Zealand) deeply influences Smart’s artistic approach, which led him to explore the shifts in natural, mechanical and social systems. The study of the interplay between an artwork, its environment and audience is a central element of Smart’s practice. For example, his site-specific installation, Jewellery for an Ancient Cedar, a cocoon-like form made of rope and foam offcuts, suspended within the canopy of a 271-year-old Cedar of Lebanon in Boston Manor Park, London, temporarily became part of the tree’s ecosystem. Community workshops and rituals accompanied the display of the artwork. With this piece, Smart transformed artificial, urban materials, typically signalling extractive human intervention, into an organic form dialoguing and coexisting with the natural environment.

Smart’s artistic practice centres on collaborating with objects, to which he listens deeply. The character he discovers within the material he works with, informs the ultimate embodiment of any given piece. It is this ongoing conversation with objects and the world we live in that provides Smart with a constantly evolving inspiration to create work.

Smart’s work spans a wide range of activities, from puppetry created for Channel 4 and Disney’s Muppets, to work for the theatre and video. He has exhibited at Design Miami.Basel, the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2022) where he was awarded the Jack Goldhill Award for Sculpture, and Circus Gallery. His most recent solo exhibitions include Jewellery for an Ancient Cedar (2025, Boston Manor Park, London) and Suspending Motion (2022, Walthamstow Wetlands, London). His collaborations include works with artists Dominic Harris, Ingrid Pollard and Lucy May Schofield.

Smart teaches at many leading art schools in London including Kingston School of Art, London Central School of Speech and Drama, and London College of Fashion.