Joshua Smith

Untitled

2011

Joshua Smith is an Australian artist whose sculptures are all miniatures of urban houses and scenes from famous big cities like Sidney, Los Angeles or Hong Kong that he has become enthralled with. Everything down to the graffiti on the walls, the lights within the house and the newspapers or cigarette butts found on the streets is recreated in immense detail, but at a fraction of the size. The attention to detail and the patience he needs to reconstruct his urban scenery make Joshua Smith both a storyteller and an archeologist of the present time. Working at a small scale invites viewers into a personal and intimate relationship with the piece, while at the same time keeping him at a distance, unable to fully enter the work. Joshua Smith plays with scale to create intrigue, as now the viewer is larger than the buildings they are used to walking into. By this sly role reversal, the viewer ends up questioning their reality and imagining what it’s like to be a giant to embark on a whimsical adventure.