
Dr Diana Baker Smith
-
PhD Art & Design: 91探花 Art & Design, Sydney, March 2017.
-
Bachelor of Fine Arts: Time Based Art, 91探花, Sydney, May 2008.
-
Bachelor of Arts (Honours Class 1): Film Studies, 91探花, Sydney, May 2008.
Diana Baker Smith is an artist and researcher whose practice explores how history is constructed, remembered, and embodied. Working at the intersection of performance and moving image, she engages archival materials to unsettle dominant narratives 鈥 particularly those shaped by settler-colonial institutions such as museums, galleries, and universities.
Her research is grounded in feminist methodologies and collaborative processes, activating embodied and affective responses to historical materials. Positioning herself as an artist-as-historian or artist-as-archivist, Baker Smith engages with sites, archives, and institutional histories to reimagine what is remembered, forgotten, or deliberately obscured. Her work often focuses on histories that are fractured, ephemeral, or incomplete 鈥 treating these ruptures as openings through which to rethink the past.
In recent years, she has developed a distinctive solo practice following a long collaborative career with the artist collective Barbara Cleveland. Recent solo exhibitions and commissions include This Place Where They Dwell (2024, Penrith Regional Gallery),听Falling Towards Another (A Score for the Void) (2024, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts), and A Score for Reconstruction (2024, Newcastle Art Gallery). She is currently developing a new body of work that draws on her familial archive to trace the entangled colonial histories of Ireland and Australia, using water as both subject and method.
Baker Smith鈥檚 solo and collaborative works have been presented at major museums and institutions including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, the Hayward Gallery (London), and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul). Her work has also featured in significant exhibitions such as Know My Name: Australian Women Artists (National Gallery of Australia, 2021), Australia: Antipodean Stories (Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea, Milan, 2020), Divided Worlds,听Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art (2018), and The Future is Already Here 鈥 It鈥檚 Just Not Evenly Distributed,听20th Biennale of Sydney (2016).
Baker Smith鈥檚 research has been supported through a range of competitive grants, residencies, and commissions, including the 2024 Judy Wheeler Commission at Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, the ACME Studio Residency in London, and funding from the City of Sydney, Creative Australia, Create NSW, and the Copyright Agency.
https://www.dianabakersmith.com/
Selected Publications
听
- D. Baker Smith, Falling Towards Another (A Score for the Void), 2024, Installation,听 performance and single channel 4K video 5:05 minutes. Commissioned by Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts for the 2024 Judy Wheeler Commission.
- D. Baker Smith, This Place Where They Dwell, 2024, 4 channel 4K video, 5:15 minutes. Commissioned for Penrith Regional Art Gallery, Home of the Lewers Bequest. Subsequently presented at Fisher鈥檚 Ghost Art Award, Campbelltown Art Centre, Sydney, 2024.
- D. Baker Smith, A Score for Reconstruction, 2024. Digital print on vinyl, 2 x 20m panels. Commissioned by Newcastle Art Gallery for Laman Street Hoarding Commission, Newcastle.
- D. Baker Smith, K. Blackmore, 2022, Brief Illuminations Between Interruptions, single channel 4K video, 13.12 minutes. Commissioned for Video Commission by Ngunungulla Regional Art Gallery, Bowral. Subsequently presented at: Gosford Art Prize, Gosford Art Gallery, 2022.
- D. Baker Smith, 2022, She Speaks in Sculpture, two channel 4K video, 9.35 minutes. Commissioned for She Speaks in Sculpture at UTS Art Gallery, Sydney, 2022. Subsequently presented at Ravenswood Australian Women鈥檚 Art Prize, Sydney, 2022; Circles of Dialogue, La Trobe Art Institute, Bendigo, 2023; Darebin Art Prize, Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, Victoria, 2024.
- D. Baker Smith, 2021, The Lost Hour, single channel HD video, 15:50 minutes. First presented at Tasks yet to be composed for the occasion, Artspace Sydney. Subsequently presented at the Ravenswood Australian Women鈥檚 Art Prize, Sydney, 2021; Phillipa Cullen: Know my Name, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Contemporary Art Tasmania, Hobart; The Condensery, Somerset Regional Art Gallery, Toogoolawah, 2022.
- D. Baker Smith, 2021, The One Hour Concert, single channel 4K video, 15:50 minutes. First presented at Tasks yet to be composed for the occasion, Artspace Sydney. Subsequently presented at Phillipa Cullen: Know my Name, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Contemporary Art Tasmania, Hobart, 2022.
- D. Baker Smith, V. Tello, 2020, Opening Night (The Order of Arrangements) single channel HD video, 17:15 minutes. Commissioned for Know my Name Conference, National Gallery of Australia, 2020. Subsequently presented at: All About Women, the Sydney Opera House, 2021; quietly, carefully, casually, Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney, 2022; Photosynthesiers: Women and the Lens, Te Uru Contemporary Gallery, Auckland, 2025
- D. Baker Smith, 2020 鈥Sculptures that go Home at Night鈥, The Art of Laziness: Contemporary Art and Anti-Work Politics, ed. David Atwood and听Francis Russell, Art+Australia, Melbourne,听pp.63-80.
- D. Baker Smith, K. Blackmore, F. Barrett, K. Doley, 2019, This is a Stained Glass Window, single channel HD video, 13.28 minutes. First presented at Sullivan+Strumpf Gallery, Sydney, 2019. Subsequently presented at Goulburn Regional Gallery, 2020; Penrith Regional Gallery, 2021; Melbourne International Film Festival, 2022; Gosford Art Gallery, NSW, 2022; Pine River Gallery, QLD, 2023; The Condensery | Somerset Regional Art Gallery, 2023; Goldfields Arts Centre, WA, 2023.
听
- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Engagement
- Teaching and Supervision
My Research Supervision
听
Jade Muratore, PhD, Going Down: fannish art methods for rendering a queerness out of time (joint with Rochelle Haley)
Mel Deerson, PhD, Stained glass guts: towards an undisciplined vision of (queer) creative practice (joint with Fernando do Campo)
Emma Fielden, MFA, Inherited stones and bodies (joint with Fernando do Campo)
Shireen Taweel, PhD, Celestial navigation, sacred architecture and space travel: decolonising space migration through speculative fiction and pilgrimage (joint with Fernando do Campo)
Elaine Su-Hui Chew, MFA, The role of art and artists in times of crisis and apocalypse (joint with Clare Milledge)
Lisa Myeong-Joo, MFA, Transcending Korean adoptee subjectivity through performance practice in relation to the mobius strip (joint with Ver贸nica Tello)
Evgenia (Jenny) Anagnostopoulou, MFA, Performing the institution as artistic and curatorial practice (secondary with Ver贸nica Tello)
听
Completed Supervisions
听
Teresa Hunter-Hicks, PhD, Labour, collaboration, and collectivity in the poster practice of Redback Graphix, Group Material, and Gran Fury (1978鈥1996) (joint with Ver贸nica Tello), 2025
听
Amber Koroluk-Stephenson, MFA, Pictorial dichotomy in the landscape: painting, collage and pastiche in post-colonial myth-making (joint with Grant Stevens), 2024
听
Amy Prcevich, MFA, Workaround: claiming time and space for art making (joint with Grant Stevens and Ver贸nica Tello), 2023
Lu Forsberg, MFA, Counter-surveillance, extractivism and eco-aesthetics (joint with Ver贸nica Tello), 2022
Amber Hammad, MFA, Speculative history and critique of gender in/out of Pakistan (joint with Ver贸nica Tello), 2022
Samuel Hodge, MFA, The Wit of the Staircase: re-narrating queer connections (joint with Grant Stevens and Rochelle Haley), 2020
Chun Yin Rainbow Chan, MFA, Shanzhai style in artistic practice: mythologising creativity and ownership in the global rise of China (joint with Astrid Lorange and Rochelle Haley), 2020
Emily Galicek, MFA, Painting and parody in a post-digital age (joint with Grant Stevens), 2019
My Teaching
Diana teaches across studio and theory courses in the Fine Arts program at 91探花 Art & Design. She convenes Moving Image 1, Performance Art, Studio Art Practice and Art & Design in Practice.听