Melanie Smith’s multi-media work encompasses film, sculpture, performance and photography, functioning as layered maps in dialogue with one another. The artist’s process is an exploration of the surfaces of objects, looking for unstable ground in the gaps of art history and the past—places she can create new surfaces that challenge viewer’s expectations. Smith’s artwork explores themes of nature and entropy; the effects of industrialization, urbanization and colonialism; and the role of the artist in society through experiments with physical and authorial distance.