A Brief Explanation of Time
Camden Arts Centre
2005/2006
Smith’s installation A Brief Explanation of Time was commissioned for Camden Arts Centre over the turn of the new year. Looking at the physical realisation of time and where and how it is positioned and understood in different cultures, Smith created a time line that ran in a circle around the gallery. Along the line Smith appropriated the energies of the Feng Shui Calender to apply to typical new years resolutions to map which days of the year would be most fortuitous to enact them.
Visitors to the gallery were then able to look up which day of the year they should attempt their new years resolution for 2006 in order to be most likely to succeed in achieving it.
Smith’s installation wove around a mathematical system of measurement based on understandings of lunar and solar cycles and included quotations and sayings from the English language that attempts to position time spatially.
An interactive element of the work was created in the Drawing Studio where visitors could add drawings of themselves prior to their resolution and imagine their improved state afterwards.
