Sarah Smuts-Kennedy: Frequency of the Earth

As part of Singular Pluralities ∞ Plural Singularities
Three solo shows in parallel

Sarah Smuts-Kennedy
Frequency of the Earth

Frequency of the Earth from Auckland based artist Sarah Smuts-Kennedy is engaged with experiential relationships with materiality. The artist has worked with various wavelengths that have been arranged into musical scores that have formations that are inaudible to the human ear. The work carefully negotiates site and duration, using the spatial and time-based parameters of this iteration as materiality. Its components manifest in sound within form: sound as colour, geometries and the sun, all brought into realisation using the pendulum as a logic apparatus. The artist’s decision making process is informed by a methodology developed from disciplines that utilise bio-energy, and other experiential based practices. This project specifically operates on the proviso that all materials have vibrational qualities, and are floating in a sea of energy that when brought into certain proximities and arrangements sculpt space. Smuts-Kennedy’s research is focused on fields of energy as they engage with conceptual thinking within art based languages and intuition driven modes of enquiry. She seeks to unfold how things work and are interconnected in real time in the space with the viewer.

“All the works develop out of processes I create which rely on my capacities to allow a rigorous synthesis of intuitive thinking and feeling. The forms and formations that emerge would never arrive out of left brain logic alone. What I am interested in exploring is the space between rigorous scientific, esoteric and artistic logics, processes and outcomes. My research is focused on the spaces between these things and my works could be considered evidences of my attempts to negotiate these modes. It requires a different kind of listening, seeing, feeling and knowing. I am interested in the learning I need to do in order to make the work and how it requires a different kind of negotiation between my inner and outer experiences of the world. As a result I am learning more about the world I live in and this in turn helps me work out new ways to share space with things.”

-Taken from an interview with the artist, Artguide interview 2016

Sarah Smuts-Kennedy is a New Zealand born and based artist, and an
MFA graduate of the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland
2012. Sarah’s biodynamic, permaculture teaching garden, 45 minutes
north of Auckland, functions as a central axis for her research. She
was the McCahon House Artist in Residence September - December
in 2016