River Smith

A 2024 graduate of the Manchester School of Art MA program, Rivers’ studio practise is focused on our relationships with mental health, our formative childhood experiences, and the impact of trauma on our psyche. This theme is explored through a diverse range of media including sculpture, installation and drawing. Each work often realised with various modes of making; focus is given to process, form and materiality. Part of what their work attempts to do is to confront the comfortable and soothe the uncomfortable. Central to the work is the question; ‘how can the audience's discomfort be used as a tool to evoke change, understanding, and empathy?’.

MA, Manchester School of Art, 2024
BFA, Fine Art, Liverpool School of Art, 2016

101 contemporary artists, book, 7th edition, featured, Collect Art, 2024

Summer Issue, magazine feature and interview, Collect Art, 2024

MA Fine Art, Manchester School of Art, Manchester, UK, 2024

2024 MA graduate show, Holden Gallery, Manchester, 2023 - 2024

Open Studios Exhibition, Group show, 70 Oxford Road, Manchester School of Art, UK, 2024

Changing the discourse, Zine, Haus a Rest, online, 2024

Finalist, Art Collide Emerging Artists’ Award, Online, 2024

Manchester Open 2024, Home Gallery, Manchester, UK, 2024

Punk/Jazz, Group Show (Navigators Art & Performance), York, UK, 2023

Traces, Group Show (Sensitif Collective), Kensington, Calgary, AB, CA 2018

Average art magazine, featured, print publication 2017

A September Exhibition, Group Show, The Mill, Arts Letters & Numbers, NY, USA 2017

Artist-in-Residence, Arts Letters & Numbers Institute, NY, USA 2017

Tertium Quid, Group Show, House on the Hill, Arts Letters & Numbers, NY, USA 2017

Intensive Residency, ‘A Third Thing’, Arts Letters & Numbers Institute, NY, USA 2017

BA (Hons) Fine Art ; Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool 2013-2016

BFA Fine Art Degree Show, Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool, U...