Sally Smart’s large scale assemblage installations, collage, painting, sculpture and performance work, intersect with ideas and influences from avant-garde dance, Surrealism, Dadaism and Feminism. Her practice engages identity politics and the relationships between the body, thought and culture including trans-national ideas that have shaped cultural history.

Smart started working in collage in the 1990s, finding the action of cutting, dissecting and reassembling collage elements an apt metaphor for her theoretical interests.

She used collaged and pinned textile elements in her large-scale installations The Exquisite Pirate (2006–), this work developed Smarts interest in examining the woman pirate as a metaphor for contemporary global issues of personal and social identity, immigration and reflects on the symbolism of the ship and its relevance to postcolonial discourse and, specifically, its relevance to contemporary and historical Australia.

Smart’s cross-cultural concerns developed in collaborations with Indonesian artists and artisans, along with The Choreography of Cutting (2013–2018) working with ideas at the intersection of dance and art. The Violet Ballet (2019), an immersive installation and video of costumes, projections, shadow puppetry and dance that elaborates on Smart’s exploration of the avant-garde practices of the Ballet Russes and its entwined legacies of Colonialism and Orientalism.

Sally Smart’s The Artists Ballet (2021–2025) assemblage installations, dance performance, film, photomontage, performance objects, costumes, painting and collage—draw on inspiration from modernisms pioneering performance repertoires through re-staging avant-garde performance; and reimagining Pina Bausch scenography.

“In 2025 with Dancetté (The Artist’s Dress), Smart continues her longstanding preoccupation with cutting, collage and fabricating, turning her attention to the avant garde histories and legacies of fashion and design. Smart’s practice embodies a long-held commitment to feminism and the desire to take risks and transcend boundaries; the monumental textile The Artist’s Ballet (Danser Brut), for example, considers both the performance of making and the making of performance, but purposely disrupts both modalities. For Smart, the acts of pinning, cutting and stitching have always been political; sewing here is not embedded in the discourses and desires of fashion, but in art – and speci!cally in its potential to rupture and realign. Likewise, transgressive female agency is evident throughout Dancetté: in the strident figures, the direct gazes, the collapse in meaning and representation of both marionettes and models, and in the not-so-gentle subversion of Smart’s own 2017 collaboration with Italian fashion house Marni. The ‘dress’ here is both personal and political. Smart’s is a practice that has continually foregrounded women as both authors and subjects and Dancetté includes reference to the wild abstract practice of Sonia Delaunay as well as to Smart’s great aunt, the Post-Impressionist Bessie Davidson. She often provides us with feminist touchstones that stretch across time and space, however it is Smart’s own authorship and ownership that is particularly asserted in Dancetté (The Artist’s Dress).”

Sally Smart’s large scale assemblage installations, collage, painting, sculpture and performance work, intersect with ideas and influences from avant-garde dance, Surrealism, Dadaism and Feminism. Her practice engages identity politics and the relationships between the body, thought and culture including trans-national ideas that have shaped cultural history.

Smart started working in collage in the 1990s, finding the action of cutting, dissecting and reassembling collage elements an apt metaphor for her theoretical interests.

She used collaged and pinned textile elements in her large-scale installations The Exquisite Pirate (2006–), this work developed Smarts interest in examining the woman pirate as a metaphor for contemporary global issues of personal and social identity, immigration and reflects on the symbolism of the ship and its relevance to postcolonial discourse and, specifically, its relevance to contemporary and historical Australia.

Smart’s cross-cultural concerns developed in collaborations with Indonesian artists and artisans, along with The Choreography of Cutting (2013–2018) working with ideas at the intersection of dance and art. The Violet Ballet (2019), an immersive installation and video of costumes, projections, shadow puppetry and dance that elaborates on Smart’s exploration of the avant-garde practices of the Ballet Russes and its entwined legacies of Colonialism and Orientalism.

Sally Smart’s The Artists Ballet (2021–2025) assemblage installations, dance performance, film, photomontage, performance objects, costumes, painting and collage—draw on inspiration from modernisms pioneering performance repertoires through re-staging avant-garde performance; and reimagining Pina Bausch scenography.

“In 2025 with Dancetté (The Artist’s Dress), Smart continues her longstanding preoccupation with cutting, collage and fabricating, turning her attention to the avant garde histories and legacies of fashion and design. Smart’s practice embodies a long-held commitment to feminism and the desire to take risks and transcend boundaries; the monumental textile The Artist’s Ballet (Danser Brut), for example, considers both the performance of making and the making of performance, but purposely disrupts both modalities. For Smart, the acts of pinning, cutting and stitching have always been political; sewing here is not embedded in the discourses and desires of fashion, but in art – and speci!cally in its potential to rupture and realign. Likewise, transgressive female agency is evident throughout Dancetté: in the strident figures, the direct gazes, the collapse in meaning and representation of both marionettes and models, and in the not-so-gentle subversion of Smart’s own 2017 collaboration with Italian fashion house Marni. The ‘dress’ here is both personal and political. Smart’s is a practice that has continually foregrounded women as both authors and subjects and Dancetté includes reference to the wild abstract practice of Sonia Delaunay as well as to Smart’s great aunt, the Post-Impressionist Bessie Davidson. She often provides us with feminist touchstones that stretch across time and space, however it is Smart’s own authorship and ownership that is particularly asserted in Dancetté (The Artist’s Dress).”