Rosie Dowd-Smyth: ACS GSS Graduate Fellow 2022-23

Rosie Dowd-Smyth lives and works in Glasgow and graduated from her MFA at Glasgow School of Art in 2022. Dowd-Smyth has exhibited extensively in Germany and the UK, including: Air Gallery Altrincham, Boecho Gallery London, ASA Studios Hamburg, Galerie Der HFBK Hamburg and Harts Lane Gallery London and a Solo show in the Pipe Factory, Glasgow in 2021.

Dowd-Smyth graduated from Goldsmiths University of London in 2017, and was subsequently awarded a year-long residency in Hamburg, Germany. Following this, a residency at Can Serrat in Barcelona in 2019. Rosie Dowd-Smyth was an Associate Lecturer at Warwickshire College in BA Fine Art and Foundation Art & Design, a guest Lecturer in Surrealist Environments at Wayne State University in Detroit, and runs many sculpture-based workshops.

Dowd-Smyth's work is playful, earnest and absurd. She advocates for the DIY, with the act of making prior to theory. Predominantly a sculptor, Rosie’s work continuously refers back to her own hand within the work. Pinning down her work is hard, just as you think you have it she wrong foots you and goes charging off in strange but equally hilarious directions. The humour in the work is also tinged with melancholy – it makes us look at the weirdness of the world, our ridiculousness and our unspoken fears. She consistently enquires into what it means to remember something, and how ideas of the monumental coincide with the heart-breakingly personal. Finally, the work takes a good hard look at what it means to be hopeful.