Rosie Dowd-Smyth is an artist based in Glasgow. Working primarily across sculpture and drawing, her practice plays with and pushes against the monumental via humour and the DIY. In place of solidifying and closing off memory, Dowd-Smyth starts from a place of forceful hope and embodied grief – grief that cannot be explained away or made to sit still, that knows still how to laugh. Always, her work balances a tightrope between the playful and the painful, between humour, earnestness and the melancholic.
The recurrent and persistent use of materials – plaster, mod-rock, watercolour, spray paint, yacht varnish and pastel – embeds Dowd-Smyth’s artworks with an enduring visual language. The artist’s hand is always present, the physicality and fallibility of personal memory etched into the shape and the weight of the work.
Her sculptures are both solid and uncertain. The sentimental phrases and one-liners that show up across her practice are given weight when etched in her recognisable, awkward handwriting, when etched into stone made of plaster and mesh. Watercolour spread sheerly over large and uneven surfaces gives otherwise monumental work an almost washed-out, lived-in finish – a humanity. Often, works look almost like they’re crumpled down or melting, folding in on themselves – like they know they are too big, they are in on the joke.
Dowd-Smyth’s commitment to material, worked through and applied with intensity, allows her art to move, to breathe, imbues it with vulnerability. Across her practice, the solidity and peculiarity of the DIY intwine to mark a practice built on getting by and powering through.
Rosie Dowd-Smyth (b. 1994) lives and works in Glasgow, U.K.
Current
Ridiculously yours! Art, Awkwardness and Enthusiasm. Deichtorhallen (Falkenberg Collection), Hamburg, Germany
(group show) 13 May 2023 - 27 Aug 2023
Education
Glasgow School of Art, MFA (distinction), 2022
Goldsmiths University of London, BA(hons) Fine art (first class), 2017
Warwickshire College, UAL Foundation in Art and Design, 2014
Warwickshire College, BTEC Art and Design, 2013
Solo Exhibitons
2021 Pipe Factory, I've Been Loving You, Glasgow
Group Exhibitions
2023 French Street, I'm so into you, Glasgow
2022 Florence Street, MFA Degree show, Glasgow
2022 Royal Scottish Academy, RSA Summer Exhibition, Edinburgh
2021 Glue Factory, hope this finds you well, Glasgow
2019 AIR Gallery, All work and all play, Altrincham, Manchester
2018 Boecho Gallery, Cibotempo, Barnes, London
2018 ASA studios, ASA Open Studios, Messehallen, Hamburg
2018 ASA Studios, To Remain Useful, Messehallen, Hamburg
2017 ASA Studios, ASA Open Studios, Messehallen, Hamburg
2017 Goldsmiths, BAFA Degree Show, New Cross, London
2017 Laurie Grove Baths, Gala, New Cross, London
2017 Ian Gulland Lecture Theatre, Grease without Sand, New Cross, London
2016 1 Octavius Street Gallery, Swallow my Tiny Face, Deptford, London
2016 Buster Mantis, Sex Toy Still Life with Laur Mar, Deptford, London
2016 Trundley Road, Mi Casa es su Casa, Deptford, London
2016 Galerie der HFBK, Carapace, Mundsburg, Hamburg
2015 Harts Lane Gallery, Stupidity, New Cross, London
2015 Harts Lane Gallery, Backwash, New Cross, London
Residencies
Aug 2021 Gush Residency, Glasgow
May - July 2019 Can Serrat, El Bruc, Barcelona
September 2017- September 2018 ASA HFBK Hamburg
Teaching
2020 Guest Lecturer at Wayne State University, Michigan on Surrealist Landscapes
2019 Associate Lecturer on BA Fine art and Contemporary Cultures at Warwickshire College
2019 Workshop leader on UAL Art and Design Foundation Course at Warwickshire College
Awards
2022 Glasgow Sculpture Studio and Artist Collecting Society Fellowship Award
2020 Hope Scott Scholarship Award
2017 ASA Residency Award, granted by Goldsmiths University of London and HFBK Hamburg
Publications
Nothing Personal, 2021
Multi Species Research Group, 2019
By All Means, 2018