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Jeremy Smith

Jeremy Smith

PhD Candidate
Arts, Design & Architecture
School of Art & Design

Email: jeremy.smith@unsw.edu.au

Supervisors: Michael Garbutt, Emma Robertson, Gary Carsley

I am a Sydney based award winning artist and current PhD candidate in drawing at UNSW Art and Design. Represented by .M Contemporary Gallery. My PhD research thesis title is ‘Counter-mapping the gay male body in Sydney, post the introduction of PrEP’. My artistic practice subverts mapping traditions to create highly detailed drawings and prints exploring the culture and history of Sydney’s Queer community. I am a co-founder and curator of Draw Space in Newtown, Sydney’s only drawing specific artist run initiative gallery.

Educated at UNSW in a Bachelor of Arts English and Bachelor of Fine Arts Drawing and Painting First Class Honours, as well as a Masters of Fine Arts. Three of my artworks are in the State Library of NSW archive. I am the winner of the 2013 Tim Olsen Drawing Prize. With a work on permanent display at Sydney University Fisher Library and works in the collections of the State Library of NSW and Maritime Museum. I have exhibited in multiple shows in Sydney and regional NSW and mostly recently in Tokyo. I currently work as a gallery attendant and tour guide at White Rabbit Gallery and previously at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
My current PhD working title is: Counter-mapping the gay male body in Sydney post PrEP.
 
In the research areas of: drawing, counter-mapping, artist as cartographer, counter-narrative, history, Sydney geography, demographics, digital mapping/drawing.
 

The aim of my research is to combine drawing with practices of counter-mapping and counter-narrative to create epistemological cultural artefacts of the changing gay male body in Sydney, post the introduction of the anti-retroviral drug Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP). These hand-drawn counter-maps and epistemologies synthesise graphic, observational and pictographic ink pen drawings, with iconography and text to create visual counter-narratives with which to visualise the often-erased history and changing topography of gay male corporeality.

The project argues that drawing is an epistemological system, with the practice of drawing as the encryption and embodiment of information that proceeds simultaneously from the act itself and the artefact this creates. A further aim of the project is to contribute to and critique attempts at ‘queering the archive’ by creating a series of cultural artefacts to be collected by institutions in Sydney. The studio practice becomes an act of creating a queer archive of history with a focus on the gay male body in Sydney.
  • 2024: Curating an exhibition about LGBTQI+ history at Qtopia Sydney.
  • 2023: Catalogue essay for TEXTA exhibition at Drawspace.
  • 2015: ‘The Uncharted Land’ Masters of Fine Arts research paper, presented and published online
  • at Drawing International Brisbane: ‘Ego, Artefact, Arena’ Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane October.
  • 2015: Smith, Jeremy, ‘ The Uncharted Land’ UNSW Art and Design, Postgraduate Conference and UNSWorks.
  • 2012: UNSWorks; Fine Arts Honours paper Smith, Jeremy, ‘Autocartography’ UNSW Art and Design.
  • 2012: ‘Tomorrow, Today’; Smith, Jeremy, ‘Cartographic Explorations of the Self’ UNSW Art and Design.