BRITTANY WALKER SMITH
I mean, where do I start?
Brittany is my daughter, an amazing artist, an educator and one of the hardest working people I know. I am a little biased, of course.
I always start by suggesting she got none of her artistic juju from me. It is all her!
Her body of work is extraordinary. Brittany is currently a Doctor of Fine Arts candidate at Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland, and her practice has developed into something completely her own.
I am definitely not going to try and explain her work. I will leave that to people who actually know what they are talking about. A recent profile described her work as blending “glamour and vulnerability”, while her gallery Plomacy describes a practice that uses humour, text, glitter, faux fur, velvet and excess to explore the world around her.
What I can say is that I love it. It is funny, excessive, uncomfortable, ridiculous, beautiful and very Brittany.
A few things she has been up to:
• Doctor of Fine Arts candidate at Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland
• Presented at Aotearoa Art Fair 2026 with Plomacy
• Inaugural winner of the Collin Post Sculpture Award and Longveld Plinth Award in 2026
• Undertook a UAP artist residency in Brisbane developing her winning public sculpture, One Foot in the Grave, the Other on a Banana Peel
• Solo exhibitions at George Fraser Gallery, Elam and RM Gallery
• Work held in the Arts House Trust Collection
• Exhibited in New Zealand and Australia
Brittany lives in New Zealand and I live in Australia. That distance is a complicated part of my life, and increasingly something I want to explore through my own work.
Over the coming year I am going to make a film about Brittany. I hesitate to call it a documentary just yet. At its heart, I think it is going to be about a father getting to know his daughter more deeply through her art.
I suspect I might learn a bit about myself along the way too.
Below is a small selection of Brittany’s work and we are lucky she has a brilliant website!
