Catherine Clayton-Smith

b. 1983 in Christchurch, New Zealand
Lives and works in Sydney, Australia

Clayton-Smith’s painting practice encompasses the boundaries between representation and abstraction. Clayton-Smith draws from mediated images and personal observations, layering and deconstructing visual data to a state of faltering permanence. Her work investigates the way in which observation and memory interact, mirroring the way in which we interpret images through the combined spaces of the digital and the real. 

Clayton-Smith completed a BFA in Painting at the National Art School in Sydney in 2014. 2015 marked her first solo exhibition, Spirit Level at Alaska Projects. In 2016 she staged subsequent solo exhibitions Obstacle Course at Studio W and Grooming at Alaska Projects [William St] followed by Intensive Care at Alaska Projects in 2017 and Root Channel at Bartley and Co. in 2018. 

She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions at; the Art Gallery of NSW, Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery, The London Art Fair, Goulburn Regional Gallery, Louis Vuitton, Coma Gallery, TCB, The Honeymoon Suite, Blindside, Alaska Projects, Gallery 9, Cross Art Projects, Ng, Dog Park Projects, Spring 1883, Sydney Contemporary, Sydney Children’s Hospital, St Vincent’s Xavier Art Space, Auckland Art Fair and the Study Centre for Drawing. She is a recipient of the National Art School’s Parker’s Sydney Fine Art Painting Award, Studio W Exhibition Prize, Blank Canvas Award for Painting and John Olsen Prize for Figure Drawing and was a finalist in the Sir John Sulman Prize in 2018. In 2019 she was awarded a residency at Waverley artist studios. 

Her work is held in several public collections including; Artbank, The Wallace Trust, The Consulate of Sierra Leone, and the National Art School Collection as well as numerous private collections in Australia, New Zealand, U.S.A. and the UK.