Anj Smith
The Sequin-Strewn Night
29 October 2025 – 24 January 2026
West Hollywood
For her first solo exhibition in Los Angeles in two decades, British artist Anj Smith presents a new body of painting where precarious psychological states and erotic desire intertwine to disrupt conventional depictions of motherhood and the female nude. Smith’s nuanced portrayals of a female-presenting body challenge the notion of a singular interpretation. Set in the context of toxic, inhospitable ecologies, the work explores the human potential for ingenuity, growth and the ability to thrive against the odds.
Drawing on references from film and literature, Smith’s luminous paintings combine intricate textures, saturated color banks and hallucinatory detail. Within these canvases’ imagined terrains, enigmatic figures and rarefied flora and fauna beckon viewers toward the possibility of transcendence, where resilience persists despite environmental collapse. Dissolving the boundaries between portraiture, landscape and still life, Smith’s paintings demand slow looking, revealing their details gradually and rewarding sustained attention.
The exhibition title is taken from a passage in Meret Oppenheim’s poem, ‘In the beginning is the end’ in which the late artist and writer conjured an idiosyncratic tableau of natural and manmade phenomena. For Smith, the poem’s ‘sequin-strewn nightscape’ recalls both star-filled skies and nocturnal revelry—life-affirming splendor that endures even within the most hostile of landscapes. Oppenheim’s refusal of convention—gendered, artistic and historical—finds kinship with Smith’s new canvases, which move from vast desert icescapes split by neon horizons to ambiguous figures cocooned in diaphanous tulle.
Anj Smith: Drifting Habitations
‘Anj Smith: Drifting Habitations’ presents Anj Smith's latest body of work, where ecologically devastated landscapes are host to liminal beings and creatures. The artist’s luscious paintings invite viewers to consider the fluidity of their perceptions of the world. This publication features a conversation between psychologist Orna Guralnik and the artist, in which such themes as plurality, rewilding and repurposing are discussed, as well as a poetic intervention by author Claire-Louise Bennett, who conjures up a roiling world of her own and plays with readers’ understanding of reality, nature and self.
Edge of Reason
Anj Smith with curator Zoé Whitley
At the Crossroads of artistic insight and intellectual curiosity, we find the Edge of Reason—a limited podcast featuring groundbreaking artists discussing the centuries-old Enlightenment principles that influence their work.
Season Three of ‘Edge of Reason’ explores the idea that art is not fixed in time but reverberates—echoing and reimagining itself across past, present and future. Hosted by Jeff Chang, the latest season features Anj Smith and curator Zoé Whitley in discussion about the world within as a site of ambiguity, imagination and deep looking, where art resists easy answers and cultivates reflection
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About the Artist
Anj Smith
Anj Smith’s work negotiates the space between the genres of portraiture, landscape, and still-life. In her interrogation and celebration of the medium of painting, alluring flora and fauna—from vines, flowers, and diverse creatures to ambiguous nudes - populate ecologically devastated landscapes. Refusing fast consumption, her work explores issues of gender, ecology, anxiety, and eroticism.
Born in 1978 in Kent, UK, Anj Smith studied at Slade School of Fine Art and at Goldsmiths College in London. Smith has exhibited at institutions around the world, including Museo Stefano Bardini, Florence, Italy; The New Art Gallery Walsall, UK; Mostyn, Llandudno, UK; Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere, Finland; Bluecoat, Liverpool, UK; Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville TN, and La Maison Rouge, Paris, France. Smith’s work is also displayed in the collections of many leading international museums including The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; MOCA The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles CA; The Roberts Institute of Art, London, and the Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere, Finland.
Current Exhibitions
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