Lynn Smith A Beautiful Anxiety

If you're feeling comfortable right know you're either rich. Or mad. There are huge issues we citizens of the world face: climate change is getting to the point of no return… permanent war is driving hundreds of thousands from their homes to find they're rarely welcome elsewhere… women are struggling for their rights, not only in backward feudal states like Saudi Arabia but also right here in Australia and other developed countries (hence the #MeToo movement)… there's an ever widening gap between a tiny number of obscenely rich individuals and the other six billion of us on the planet… and that's for starters.

So where do artists sit in all this? We can't change the world: that's a political task. But we can (and should) ask questions.

My image making does not deal with social issues explicitly. The element of pathos in my work… the solidarity we have with damaged and discarded objects… is designed to arouse a feeling of anxiety. I don't make ornamental pictures. I'm trying to remind us that all is not well. My aim is to shake you up… even if it's just a little.

But there's also another component I try and incorporate: light. Which is much more dramatic when captured in the city at night.

Light to me represents hope… a metaphor for a better future.