Matt Smith: the truths untold

artist focusmatt smithart exhibitioncontemporary ceramicsceramics

Feb 10

No, not that Matt Smith (and to save you wondering: yes, if you Google ‘Matt Smith Ceramics’ a lot of Doctor Who merchandise comes up). If you have been following my Instagram feed this month you will know I have been featuring only artists from the LGTBQ+ community, as it is LGBTQ+ History Month in the UK throughout February. I can think of no one better to focus on in the first of two blog posts this month than an artist who first came to my attention with an exhibition called Queering The Museum at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery (the link here is to the excellent publication from this exhibition which includes a brilliant essay by Oliver Winchester, previously of the V&A, analysing contemporary museum practices and how same-sex relationships and stories can and should be integrated within them from page 6).

“Queering the Museum is a deliberate act of wilful confusion and disorder… each object that Matt has inserted, moved or recontextualised… is intended to playfully upset the museum applecart, play with visitor expectations, upend the sober, educational and rigid conceptual boundaries that usually constitute a museum display.”1

Matt Smith is not just an artist; he is a curator, historian, researcher and professor. His approach to creating museum interventions, and the objects to sit within them, is like no one else’s. Some people say his interventions disrupt and subvert, but I don’t think that’s fair – I think they do more: they enhance, enrich, embolden, embrace, inform and realign contemporary museum visitors’ experiences. Which sounds like an awful lot for one artist, but his interventions for Queering The Museum, Flux: Parian Unpacked at The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and Losing Venus at Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford don’t just add some contemporary objects alongside existing museum collections; they question every institutes’ historic attitude towards and representation of LGBTQ+ communities, at home and in the Empire, and colonial history – and thereby the audience’s knowledge and acceptance of the harsh, ugly, untaught realities of British imperial rule.

“Losing Venus engages not only with what is here, but prominently highlights what is not: the truths untold, the gaps, the silences. The work helps question long-held views of progress and enlightenment that aid exclusion instead of inclusion…”2

Unfortunately, Losing Venus has become a victim of COVID-19 restrictions. It had been installed in early 2020 in the upper galleries of the mesmerising Pitt Rivers Museum, but even when the first UK lockdown restrictions were eased, access was curtailed because the staircases precluded social distancing. In some ways the exhibition’s current predicament is a very British problem: it is unable to impart truths about our colonial past due to the government’s mishandling of the present. In lieu of a visit to the exhibition in person, I strongly recommend Smith’s essay in the Losing Venus catalogue, which starts on page 10 of the PDF, about same-sex relationships in the Pacific before and after British colonialism. It is so eye-opening that instead of quoting from it here, I urge you to read it in full.

“Lesbian, gay, bi and trans experiences and histories are a relatively new area for examination within the museum sector. An area of research currently in its infancy, the telling of such histories - and the methods for so doing - is exciting, complex and difficult… Perhaps the most complex question stems from the inherent contradiction that lies at the centre of the gay liberation movement and its legacy - the desire to eradicate discrimination whilst enshrining difference.”3

Smith’s work is beautifully subtle. These are objects that don’t assault you visually, but rather encourage further investigation. When audiences encounter them, the style, the technique and the placements often act as ways of blending in. And why should they need to attract particular attention to themselves? After all, they are filling gaps and righting wrongs in museum displays. They are the objects and stories that should have been there all along.

“Unlike ethnic groups, the gay, lesbian and bisexual community does not share visually identifiable characteristics. This has allowed us to hide within the heterosexual population during times of persecution. It also means that we have to actively ‘come out’, telling family and friends that we are queer.”4

As someone who is aware of the atrocities committed in the establishment, expansion and maintenance of the British Empire – to say nothing of subsequent interference in former colonies’ affairs and the ensuing chaos – I feel an amount of post-colonial guilt that makes Smith’s work affect me deeply. His intervention at Pitt Rivers Museum further amplifies the commendable work that Laura van Broekhoven is doing to accurately retell the stories of how their collection came to be there and the mishandling of cultural artefacts.

Meanwhile, Smith’s installation at The Fitzwilliam Museum directly commented on the means by which the subjects of their newly gifted parian ware collection gained their wealth: through slave and colonial trading. In early 2021, this intervention of Smith’s from 2018 takes on even more significance with the efforts of the global Black Lives Matter campaign including the toppling of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol and the existing Rhodes Must Fall campaign in Oxford.

“When you’re talking specifically about what a monument does, you’re passing down a story, you’re passing down identity… they’re passing down an idea… you get to see yourself in that, in a thing that’s bigger than yourself… It goes deeper than seeing a black face on a monument, it’s tied to ideals and cultural norms that are being preserved and are violent against the people in your own community.”5

While Smith’s work to enrich, embolden and realign contemporary museum visitor experiences sounds like an awful lot for one artist to achieve single-handedly, there are museum professionals in the UK who are also committed to this journey – and every single visitor who encounters Smith’s work can disseminate these messages further. Museums are crucial tools for education, and hopefully now those lessons are becoming as open, honest and all-embracing as they possibly can be. There are no excuses not to be.

“… nothing stays the same, and change is inevitable. We choose what we see and what we wish not to see.”6

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Edited by Sarah McGill

1 & 3 – Oliver Winchester; Matt Smith: Queering The Museum; 2014; Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery

2 – Laura van Broekhoven; Matt Smith: Losing Venus; 2020; Pitt Rivers Museum

4 – Matt Smith; Matt Smith: Queering The Museum; 2014; Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery

5 – Isaac Scott; Isaac Scott on black representation in public spaces and photographing protests; 2020; Tales of The Red Clay Rambler Podcast, Episode 327

6 – Matt Smith; Matt Smith – Flux: Parian Unpacked; 2018; The University of Cambridge (The Fitzwilliam Museum)