Serena Smith is a visual artist and writer whose research draws on the histories and genealogies that laid the ground for her professional life as a lithographer. Internationally recognised in the field, Smith trained in lithography at the Curwen Studio, London. Her formal education included postgraduate study at Central Saint Martin’s School of Art and the Institute of Education, London.
Widely exhibited in the UK and overseas, Smith’s book works and stone lithographs are held in a number of collections including, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Bayerische Staatsbiblioteck, Munich; British Library, London; British Museum, London; China Printmaking Museum, Shenzhen; Nottingham University, Ningbo, China; and Books on Books Collection, UK.
Writing on Stone: a practice-led reflection on the generative intersection between language and lithography
Supervisors: Prof. Marsha Meskimmon and Dr. Deborah Harty
Prompted by the question: How do the processes and practices of stone lithography engender language in the making? Serena Smith’s research explores the generative intersection between two modes of inscription: stone lithography and writing.
Drawing on both a wide interdisciplinary field of reference and the particularities of a lithographer’s studio practice, Smith’s research reveals the many modes of language that are brought about by the serendipitous coupling of 19th Century technology with the substrate of Jurrassic limestone. Aligned with both academic writing rooted in feminism, and a field of fine art practice that employs language as material and medium, the heterogeneous languages that Smith explores include lithography training manuals, tacit communication, and vocal and visual poetics.
2023 ‘Attending to the Sounds of Sonorous Stones’. IMPACT Printmaking Journal. IMPACT proceedings. 2023. https://impact-journal-cfpr.uwe.ac.uk/index.php/impact/article/view/82/69
2020 ‘On Stone’. Inscription: the Journal of Material Text – Theory, Practice, History. Eds. Gill Partington, Simon Morris, Adam Smyth. https://inscriptionjournal.com/2020/06/28/on-stone/
2020 ‘Ekphrasis: inscriptions on wood and stone. IMPACT Printmaking Journal. Issue 1. https://impact-journal-cfpr.uwe.ac.uk/index.php/impact/article/view/32/25