Allison Smith
American, 1972-

Stockpile, 2011
Unfinished wood and mixed media
144 x 216 x 216"

Courtesy of the artist and Haines Gallery



Undated color photograph of Allison Smith

"My sculptures are imbued with an artifact quality through their association with events and their engagement with the public, whether through activities of collaborative making, activation in social space, or material transformation from one context to the next." - Allison Smith

COMMENTS

Stockpile is a large structure comprised of objects and materials suggesting early-American colonial craft reenactment and reproduction. Among these sculptural emblems of patriotism, I have included such familiar forms as crates, barrels, and baskets, pieces of unfinished wood furniture for domestic interiors and campsites, a spinning wheel, flags, drums, canteens, wooden guns, and many other items held together precariously like a stockpile of raw materials poised at a tipping point. I see this work as akin to a campsite or period room turned in on itself, in which objects for the home and battlefield form a collected pile of loot, perhaps held in reserve for use at a time of shortage or emergency.

In my use of primarily unfinished wood, this sculpture suggests a blank canvas upon which to project imagery or imagination and also a campfire or funeral pyre. The objects appear to be new and ready to be used, like props for a reenactment. Their accumulation as a sculptural mass of this scale also evokes a sense of anxiety, if not obsession. Aside from the question of how these objects are to be performed and by whom, this work also asks "Who made this?" Many of the items embedded in the piece were in fact made in Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, India, Brazil, and China, bringing these colonial reproductions full circle from their historical referent to current issues of American mass consumption and outsourced labor, a form of colonialism reenacted in the present.

Smith was born in Manassas, Virginia in 1972. She received a BA in psychology from the New School for Social Research, a BFA in fine arts from Parsons School of Design, and an MFA in sculpture from the Yale University School of Art. She also participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. She lived in New York City from 1990 until 2008 when she relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area to join the faculty of California College of the Arts, where she is Chair of the Sculpture Program.

- Projects, Allison Smith Studio, Web, n.d.

SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS

BORN 1972, MANASSAS, VIRGINIA
LIVES AND WORKS IN OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA

Allison Smith grew up in a family of Confederate lineage in a region of the United States that sustains an active engagement with Civil War heritage. As a child she attended battle reenactments, colonial craft fairs, and public memorials. These events informed her keen awareness of the ways in which individuals and communities construct history and identity. By evoking varying degrees of nostalgia and apprehension, the artist creates works that explore the darker aspects of national pride and nation building.

Historical resonance collides with contemporary concerns in Smith’s Stockpile, an installation made of crates, barrels, wooden guns, and many other colonial-era inspired objects. Piled on top of one another as if they were reserved for a battlefield or an emergency, the mass of objects suggests impending collapse. Many of these ostensibly American goods were in fact made in postcolonial countries such as India and Malaysia. Smith thereby exposes a direct link between controversial labor practices and the consumerist desire to own objects that appear authentic or handmade.

Labour and Wait, 2013