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  • 23 hours ago
Sally Smoker been nominated for the Women in Art Prize as well as shortlisted for Peugeot's Artist of the Future Award, with her work being showcased at the Saatchi Gallery in London.


Meghan Shaw reports.
Transcript
00:00So Sally, you're only 22 years old, so how does it feel to be making the shortlist for these
00:05Procedures Awards so early in your career?
00:08Really unbelievable. I didn't think anything like that would ever happen to me.
00:12So I can't believe it's already happening just after graduating uni.
00:16And for those of us who aren't familiar at home, I had to research them when I was putting this together,
00:21but tell us about these prizes and what they're for.
00:24So the Women in Art Prize is basically to try and promote UK and international women's artists,
00:35both emerging and non-emerging.
00:39And they do a yearly award every year to just try and get people's names out there.
00:45And the Peugeot one, it's sponsored by Peugeot,
00:50and to try and, again, give people the opportunity to have their work in the Saatchi Gallery.
00:58And we can see some of your work here.
01:00So these are the ones in the Saatchi Gallery, is that right?
01:03Can you just speak us through them there? I've never seen work like that.
01:06So the two that are in the Saatchi Gallery are the two collages.
01:09I made them for a project called Nine Limes, which was my major project at uni.
01:16And they're just basically about the passing of my grandma, who died in November of 2024.
01:22So I made them as kind of a form of art therapy to try and help me through that grief.
01:27And they took all, there's 10 collages in total,
01:31and altogether they took about 30 hours to make.
01:34So, yeah.
01:35Wow.
01:36So long, so with these, like, these, are they different photos that you've, like, merged?
01:40Did you do that by hand or, like, digitally?
01:42Yeah, by hand.
01:43Wow.
01:43So that one, the original photos are about that big.
01:48And I basically just scanned it and then printed it out and chopped it up into segments
01:53and then hand-weaved it myself.
01:56Wow.
01:56I would never have thought to do that.
01:58Is that something that, is this the first time you've done that kind of thing?
02:01Or is it something you've kind of honed at uni?
02:03Um, I've never done the weaving before.
02:06I've done another project that involved kind of mixing up photos,
02:11but I've never done anything like that before.
02:13So I really enjoyed doing that.
02:15Oh, was there, like, a ceremony that you got to go to?
02:17Yeah, I got to go to a fancy ceremony.
02:19There was a fancy hotel and then it went into, for the Saatchi one,
02:24we then, it was announced at the Saatchi gallery in the evening.
02:27So that was quite exciting.
02:28And I got to meet all the other artists and the same thing happened for the Women in Art Prize.
02:33It happened at the British Library, like a whole award ceremony.
02:37So that was exciting because I'd never done anything like that before.
02:39Yeah, lots of good fun, I bet.
02:41And, of course, this is, you're only 22.
02:44I imagine you've got a big career in front of you.
02:46What are you kind of hoping to do next in your photography work?
02:50Well, the next aim is to try and get a job in the industry.
02:53It's quite hard at the moment because there's not a lot of jobs out there.
02:55So I'm hoping to try and get a job in archives or curation.
02:59So that's kind of the dream.
03:01And then apart from that, I'm going to work on some other projects alongside that.
03:05I'm going to work on some other projects.
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