Gemma Smith / Australia b.1978 / Chessboard painting #8 2008 / Synthetic polymer paint on inlaid wooden chessboard / 50 x 50cm / Purchased 2009 with funds raised through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Appeal / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Gemma Smith

Gemma Smith
Chessboard painting #8 2008

Not Currently on Display

Gemma Smith’s colourful and abstract paintings on chessboards follow a set of self-imposed rules, which she pushes to their logical extent and, in the process, highlights their absurdity. Smith manoeuvres colour across a grid to reposition the act of painting as both playful and contemporary.

In the same way that each move of a chess piece affects the entire board, each new colour reflects on and reacts with all the others, necessitating the re-evaluation of pre-existing colour relationships: every addition, like each move in a chess game, must take into account the ever-changing conditions of the board.

In 2005 Smith studied colour theory at Parsons School of Design in New York, and researched the subject using Yale University’s Faber Birren Collection of Books on Color, one of the world’s largest holdings of books on colour theory. Through her knowledge of colour and the abstraction of modernism, Smith engages audiences with the pleasure of making art through improvisation, play and invention.