Katey Smoker approaches paint as both a physical substance and a structural element. Through repetition, accumulation, and variation, she moves beyond the frame, the brush, and the canvas, redefining it in terms of mass, presence, and form. Her work resists the idea of painting as an image, and instead invites a way of looking that values material, process, and the experience of encountering paint as something built, felt and spatial.

“For me, paint is not just a material. It is a living, shifting thing. It flows, cracks, stretches, and settles in ways that are both unpredictable and revealing. In my work I seek this movement. I let it shape itself as much as I shape it. I want it to take up space, to be felt and understood through presence rather than image.”

Smoker holds a Bachelor of Contemporary Art and a Bachelor of Metallurgical Engineering from the University of South Australia. Her final-year body of work, A Delicate Balance between Intention and Intuition, was selected for Hatched: National Graduate Exhibition 2024 at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art. She was a 2024 ACE Studio resident and received the Major Exhibition Prize at the 2024 Helpmann Academy Graduate Exhibition. Other awards include the UniSA Creative Graduate Exhibition Prize (2023), the John Christie Wright Memorial Prize for Painting (2023), and the Friends of the South Australian School of Art Inc Prize (2020).

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2025     Linden New Art (upcoming), St Kilda, VIC. Supported by Helpmann Academy, IAS Fine Art Logistics & Linden New Art (12 Jun - 13 July)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              2025     No Place Like..., Household, SA                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            2025     In Essence, Adelaide Fringe Festival, Gallery 1855, SA                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            2024     ACE Studios: 2024, Adelaide Contemporary Experimental, SA                          
2024     Hatched: National Graduate Exhibition, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, WA                 
2024     Helpmann Academy Graduate Exhibition, SASA Gallery, SA                                                                                                                                                                                           2024     Short Notice #2, SASA Gallery, SA
2023     Coalesce, Graduate Exhibition, University of South Australia
2022     Off The Grid, Adelaide City Libraries, SALA Festival, SA
2021      May: revisions, interventions, extensions, SASA Gallery, SA
2021      Remade, Gallery 1855, SA