P.A.R.A.D.E. (Modern drama and the artist’s ballet, and horsecraft - brown)

Sally Smart is known for her sumptuous assemblages that span paper collages, large-scale textiles, and multi-media installations. Smart unpicks and reconstructs notions of feminine identity, art history and the body in motion, often inflected with motifs derived from early 20th century avant-garde dance and visual art. In particular, Smart is inspired by the Dada movement and the Ballets Russes, a ballet company established in Paris in 1909 that revitalised European dance through its ground-breaking collaborations between choreographers, composers, dancers, and designers.

These influences entwine in Smart’s P.A.R.A.D.E. (Modern drama and the artist’s ballet, and horsecraft - brown) 2019-23 which comprises two textile works; P.A.R.A.D.E. (modern drama and the artist’s ballet) 2023 and P.A.R.A.D.E. (Horsecraft – brown) 2019. The work pays homage to the historical avant-garde performances and designs of the Ballets Russes through direct allusions to the 1917 ballet Parade, which featured stage and costume designs by Pablo Picasso, music by Erik Satie, choreography by Leonide Massine, and a one-act scenario by Jean Cocteau. The set design and costumes of the ballet were so influential that some believed they inspired the emergence of the Surrealist movement.

Smart captures the original ballet’s account of circus life through an elegant motley of harlequin prints, geometric shapes and a cast of characters, both equine and human. A sweeping curtain depicted in P.A.R.A.D.E. (Modern drama and the artist’s ballet) acts as a compositional device that also invokes the stage as a place of performance and emotive potential, while the artist’s use of actual textiles and fabric references her long-standing interest in the domestic and the feminine. Smart offers an ecstatic celebration of the historic avant-garde, but also contemporary women who rewrite these histories for the present moment.