Performance/Punokawan/Chout (The Choreography of Cutting)

Sally Smart, artist
Australia
1960

Studio Sally Smart, Yogyakarta, manufacturer
Indonesia

DGTMB Art Embroidery, Yogyakarta, manufacturer
Indonesia

Performance/Punokawan/Chout (The Choreography of Cutting)
2017
cotton, textiles, synthetic embroidery thread, aluminium, wooden sticks, pins, screenprinted and synthetic polymer paint elements
Place made
Melbourne
Medium
cotton, textiles, synthetic embroidery thread, aluminium, wooden sticks, pins, screenprinted and synthetic polymer paint elements
Dimensions
300.0 x 1070.0 cm
Credit line
Gift of John and Jane Ayers, Elma Christopher, Tracey and Michael Whiting through the Art Gallery of South Australia Contemporary Collectors 2017
Accession number
20176S34(a-j)
Signature and date
Not signed. Not dated.
Provenance
The artist.
Media category
Sculpture
Collection area
Australian sculptures
Copyright
© the artist, courtesy of Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert

  • Sally Smart is recognised for her large-scale cut-out assemblages, theatrical installations, films and performances. Raised in the regional town of Quorn in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia, the artist has studios in Melbourne and Yogyakarta.

    Performance/Punokawan/Chout (The Choreography of Cutting), 2017, is a ten-metre-long textile collage, comprised of Smart’s signature motifs and enduring preoccupations, referencing modernism, dada and fluxus.

    Smart uses images that have been printed, painted or embroidered on cloth in her collages, the images themselves drawn from a melange of art-historical and cultural influences – from the modernist Ballets Russes, to the wayang kulit, or Indonesian shadow puppetry. For this work, the artist has printed digital images from Ballets Russes costumes, and, through an appliqué process, has combined machine embroidery and fabrics informed by her time in Indonesia, in her studio in Yogyakarta and working with DGTMB Art Embroidery.

    When Sergei Diaghilev founded the Ballets Russes in Paris in 1909, he assembled a group of experimental visual artists, choreographers and composers, transforming traditional ballet into a modern art form in the process. A century later, Smart reignites the radical interdisciplinary pursuits of the avant-garde by referencing choreography, as well as costume and set design.

    Leigh Robb, Curator of Contemporary Art



  • [Book] AGSA 500.