For NPS’s latest exhibition, we present Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette), an exhibitionabout smoking. Objects and artworks from Holly Stevenson, Becky Beasley, Sandra Lane, Noemi Conan and Taryn O’Reilly play with the ritul of smoking. The work included explore wider questions on the role smoking continues to play in society and culture, and the lives and social exchanges it provides a backdrop for. The sensory experience of lighting up is imagined through cigarettes clutched between fingers, fag ends on the floor and the humble cigarette. Straights, packets, cigars and ashtrays tell stories of family members who smoked, smoking’s psychoanalytic nuance, and art historiacal heritage. The assertive femininity of women with cigs in hands and mouths draws upon the habit’s perceived independence, glamour and coolness, which for a long time have played within our cultural psyche.
Kitty B
I paint smoking ladies with a bad attitude and a disregard to customer service standards since 2018. They are inspired ny the women I knew growing up, in small town Poland of the 90s, when everyone was smoking, everyone wanted money but jobs were precarious and hard to find. Around me the towns were dominated by women, single mothers and each a business savvy survival artist, managing the conversion from real existing socialism to the guilded promise of capitalism imported from the West. The men were largely absent- consumed by the pursuit of moeny or defeated by unemployment and everything depended on the resilience of these chain smoking Amazon warriors (having Xena on TV helped to make mythological analogies). Bread and cheap smokes from the East to calm one’s nerves and stomach.
Noemi Conan