Vivian Ross-Smith (she/her) makes paintings, performances and textiles that act as corporeal offerings to the viewer. She considers practices of care, including generosity, reciprocity, and expectations of rest, to create space for experiential-led happenings, in the process allowing communities to be formed.

Rooted in her background in Social Care Work, Ross-Smith utilises non-verbal communication, gesture, and coding, to emphasise tactility as a superior language in her practice. Exploring sensuality and the queering of materiality, Ross-Smith encourages a bodily response to her artwork through touch and active participation, which in turn raises questions of function.

The making practices and material culture of place play a central role in the site-specificity evident in her work. Ross-Smith makes the solid rock that surrounds her body malleable and prefers her art practice to exist in the “non-art spaces” in which she feels most comfortable.