Cheri Smith
Cheri Smith (b. 1991, Essex) currently lives and works in London. Cheri’s works explore themes of animality,
embodiment, wildness and strangeness, and are informed
by her own detailed observations and imagination. She
paints with oil, egg tempera or glue distemper onto
supports such as canvas, panel and bookcover. Animals
proliferate in Cheri’s paintings, offering a symboli role while also enacting their own autonomous lives. They scratch and nip with a playfulness bordering on
violence. These works intend to illuminate the inherent
unknowability of the natural world, and to ruminate on our
contemporary place within it. At the core of this is an investigation into the relationship between looking and knowing, and the history of how humans have looked at the natural world.
Cheri Smith completed her postgraduate in drawing from the Royal Drawing School in 2018, where she was awarded the Trustees Prize. She received her BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Norwich University of the Arts in 2013. She has been the recipient of residencies at Hanover Grange, Jamaica (2019) and Borgo Pignano, Italy (2020), and will undertake a residency at Dumfries House, Scotland later this year. Her recent exhibitions include It is Better to be Cats than be Loved, Tabula Rasa Gallery (London, 2022); Bookworks, James Freeman Gallery (London, 2022); Nine Lives, Fortnight Institute (New York, 2021); Winter Solstice 2020 Art, Books & Ephemera, Fortnight Institute (New York, 2020); The Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize, the Mall Galleries (London, 2019), and Best of the Drawing Year at Christies (London, 2018).
RELATED EXHIBITION
The Consolation of Clinamen, Tabula Rasa Beijing, July 2023
It is Better to be Cats than be Loved, Group show, Tabula Rasa London, July 2022
PRESS
Cheri Smith completed her postgraduate in drawing from the Royal Drawing School in 2018, where she was awarded the Trustees Prize. She received her BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Norwich University of the Arts in 2013. She has been the recipient of residencies at Hanover Grange, Jamaica (2019) and Borgo Pignano, Italy (2020), and will undertake a residency at Dumfries House, Scotland later this year. Her recent exhibitions include It is Better to be Cats than be Loved, Tabula Rasa Gallery (London, 2022); Bookworks, James Freeman Gallery (London, 2022); Nine Lives, Fortnight Institute (New York, 2021); Winter Solstice 2020 Art, Books & Ephemera, Fortnight Institute (New York, 2020); The Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize, the Mall Galleries (London, 2019), and Best of the Drawing Year at Christies (London, 2018).
RELATED EXHIBITION
The Consolation of Clinamen, Tabula Rasa Beijing, July 2023
It is Better to be Cats than be Loved, Group show, Tabula Rasa London, July 2022
PRESS
ARTWORK | TABULA RASA GALLERY
Tabula Rasa Gallery (London)
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N1 6AQ
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Hoxton, London
N1 6AQ
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