painter, illustrator and comic strip artist, lives at Bondi in Sydney. He made posters in the late 1960s (when he says there wasn’t much around apart from Sharp and Ellis in Honi Soit ). In 1976, while studying art at Alexander Mackie (now CoFA), he started drawing comics with Frank Littler, influenced by the US comic Murf . He and a small group of similar enthusiasts began producing Oz Comix , which survived only two or three issues. He then did 'gory horror political comics’: Fantastique , then 'Tom’ in Chaos Founding Tales (8-9 issues) (titles unconfirmed). Eddie magazine 1988-95 (11 issues) also had comic content. In the late 1990s he contributed to Phillip Adams’ magazine Kookaburra , which lasted one issue. (The only other thing then going on in Sydney seems to have been Streetwize at Leichhardt.) Past themes were substance abuse and being anti-social; his current major theme in1999 was attacking 'hard-core greedies’.
Steve Smith has exhibited drawings and paintings in Sydney since 1983 and is represented by Mori Gallery. The Bar at Pauls Cross Trails Town Trading Post 1984, pen and ink on paper, $400 (an Oz country pub scene), and Girl Gang 1986, pen and ink on paper $400 (lesbian motor bike gang), were acquired by ML for the 1999 black and white art exhibitions at the library and S.H. Ervin Gallery. Jo Holder reported on his solo show of 'quite fabulous’ paintings at Mori’s in April 1999, all, he claims, from dreams – although she noted that a surprising number use familiar Italian or Northern Renaissance tropes. Smith also does sign-writing. He painted the red section titles on the walls of the SH Ervin for the 1999 B/W exhibition curated by Joan Kerr, Jo Holder and Craig Judd, when he was concentrating on painting rather than drawing or doing comics.
- Writers:
- Kerr, Joan
stokel
- Date written:
- 1996
- Last updated:
- 2007
