With deep reverence to the arts, we are honoured to announce our partnership with Melbourne Art Fair, a seminal fixture on the Australasian cultural calendar.

This year's theme is centred around Djeembana––a word of the Boon Wurrung––described as a lacuna in language, where direct translation fails. Loosely alluding to ‘place’, Djeembana is more broadly a meeting point for community, ideas, ritual, and knowledge.

Paying homage to this year’s theme, The Portrait Series profiles four of the region’s most respected artists, whose works are forever woven into the fabric of contemporary art in Australia.

One of Australia's most significant contemporary artists with a practice that engages identity politics, Smart's ideas relate to the body; the home and history. Smart is recognised internationally for producing stunning, large-scale cut-out assemblage installations made from felt, canvas, silk-screened and everyday fabrics that she constructs with pins. Smart is a process-oriented artist, often presenting narratives that characteristically subvert gender hierarchies through deconstruction and reconstruction of historical events and political associations with the traditional activities of women. Her work identifies with the art practices of Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism.