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Gallerysmith

@gallerysmith_

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Fine art photographer
Naarm/Melbourne: @gallerysmith_
Elsewhere: DM or email

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Tomorrow night we have our final celebration for Kate Ballis and her ground-breaking exhibition, Sculpted Garden. If you’re in the hood, drop in between 5.30-7.30 on Thursday, October 1st. by @gallerysmith_

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11 days ago

My solo show “Sculpted Garden” is now on @gallerysmith_ until October 3rd.

The show features cyanotypes exposed in the sun as well as large scale infrared photographs, of flowers in my garden and objects and art inspired by my garden.

@blachford and my garden is my sanctuary and fairy haven 🧚 I’ve included lots of snaps from my garden yesterday evening. Usually it’s full of anemones, ranunculus, tulips and poppies this time of year but it’s been a warm season, and we appear to have an issue with rodents eating the bulbs! The garden is still coming to life though, and within a few days more blossoms and the wisteria will be out. I’ll capture again towards the end of the week!

If you happen to be in Melbourne, we are hosting closing drinks at the gallery this Thursday night, October 1st, 5:30pm-7:30pm. I’d love to see you there! 🌸🌸🌸 taken in Gallerysmith by @gallerysmith_

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14 days ago

ON SHOW - Kate Ballis and her incredible work, Infrabotanica Tulipa ii, 152x123cm, as part of her solo exhibition, Sculpted Garden at Gallerysmith.

And if you’re a Melbourne or regional Victorian interior designer or stylist: we’d love to welcome you to an exclusive VIP viewing at Gallerysmith. To receive an invitation, DM us and we’ll send details.

Gallerysmith is open tomorrow, 11am–5pm . come and experience Sculpted Garden in person.

Gallerysmith, 40 Porter St, Prahran by @gallerysmith_

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18 days ago

My new show, “Sculpted Garden” opens @gallerysmith_ tomorrow evening - Thursday September 10th, 5:30pm-7:30pm. I’d love to see you there!

The show features photographs and cyanotypes of flowers from my garden. My garden is inspired by my trip to Glastonbury in 2019 and visit to the Chalice Wells garden where the fairies dance.

The photographs themselves are a mix of old meets new. The flowers take on a sculpted form when photographed under an infrared security camera light, and the digital backgrounds are a nod to my heritage. The cyanotypes were a super fun old-world approach and I loved the fact that the rays of the sun developed them, imbuing them with a bit of solar energy. ✨

The photographs are large scale - 150cm x 120cm, and the cyanotypes are presented as sets in ultramarine blue Perspex boxes.

The show runs until October 3rd. 🤍 taken in Gallerysmith by @gallerysmith_

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a month ago

Over the coming days, we’ll be unveiling our portfolio for Sydney Contemporary, beginning with two exceptional new cross-media works by Kate Ballis.

Created exclusively for the 2026 fair, Ballis’ Sculpted Garden pieces will only be available for the duration of Sydney Contemporary.

Drawing on the decorative language of 18th-century English Jasperware, these works offer a contemporary interpretation of historical ideas around beauty and ornamentation. Combining photography, mixed-media painting and AI technology, Ballis pushes her practice into new territory while retaining the distinctive visual language that has defined her practice for more than a decade.

See them first at Sydney Contemporary | Booth C09 | 3–6 September 2026.
DM for details or to pre-order your unique artwork. Image credits: Kate Balis, Infrabotanica Papaver Rhoeas III and Infrabotanica Rananculus Asiaticus I
2026
oil, gouache, watercolour, cold wax and UV pigment ink on canvas
120x96cm by @gallerysmith_

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2 months ago

Sorting through the hundreds of cyanotypes I have made recently. Adding to my Infrabotanica series and reflecting on my ancestry and journeys to ancestral lands. I’m finding that for every project I use digital technology for I like to come back to old processes and technologies in between. The flowers featured are all grown in my garden from seed or bulb. I planted 200 tulips this weekend ready for late spring 🤍💙 taken in Glastonbury, Somerset, United Kingdom by @gallerysmith_

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4 months ago

The paintings in Future Flora are inspired by over 15 years of trekking and photographing otherworldly deserts. @blachford and I have been to Joshua Tree National Park (13 times including our wedding?!), the deserts of Arizona, hot air balloons over the Atacama desert in Chile, the salt flats of Bolivia, and the desert-like lunar landscapes of Iceland, sparse arid scapes of the Greek Islands and the otherworldly landscapes of the Galápagos Islands.

Especially inspiring were the 1000 year old cacti on Isla del Pescado in the Salar de Uyuni Bolivia (where it was minus 25 degrees overnight!) and the Azorella compacta in the Atacama Desert some of which were over 3000 years old! My practice has been forever informed by Joshua Tree National Park, the Dali Valley in Bolivia and the energy vortices in Sedona, Arizona.
Next desert: Uluṟu in October with @foolscapstudio

The painting in slide 3 whilst in a desert scape is also inspired by the sculptural forms of the foxgloves in my garden and my friend @communicationscollective evocatively describing how it felt to walk amongst the towering foxgloves in the UK as a toddler. 🌸 One year my foxgloves grew to 2m tall, I’m not sure what I was feeding them, I haven’t been able to repeat it!

The full Future Flora series is up on my website - link in bio.

🌵🌵🌵🌵🌵🌵🌵 taken in Atacama Desert by @gallerysmith_

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3 months ago

My new Future Flora painting series - part 2 🌸
…
I am interested in unseen energies and other worlds, which has come up in all my work over the years eg invisible spectrums of light - infrared, uv - otherworldly landscapes✨🧚 This series features otherworldly landscapes but I have also experimented with bringing the frequency of sound into my practice.
I learned sound healing in Glastonbury in 2019 and only realised last year that I have a common type of synesthesia where I see colours and shapes when I listen to music and that what I listen to affects the way I paint.
Inspired by Kandinsky and my all time fave Hilma af Klint, I was curious about whether I could incorporate my interests in unseen energies, sound healing and synesthesia into my work. I found watercolour to be the best medium to experiment with allowing automatism in the work. I set an intention, meditate and listen to sound healing-scapes while doing the initial layers of painting in watercolour and gouache, and play around with vibrating the pigments and water with singing bowls. It’s just a starting point which I aim to explore more directly in the future, with lots of experiments and ideas brewing!!
I love the spontaneous flow of the watercolour and gouache, and realised that in my landscape photography, especially aerial photography, I am always looking for natural patterns created by deep time that flow just like the blooms of watercolour.

All pieces in this post are 120cm x 180cm, oil, watercolour, gouache, cold wax and UV pigment in on canvas.

The full series can be viewed on my website (link in bio). 🌸💖 by @gallerysmith_

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3 months ago

Introducing my new Future Flora paintings!

Did you know that while I’ve been a photographer for 16 years, I’ve been learning to paint for 10+ of those years and it’s become an obsessive passion of mine!

I think in a way I’ve always searched for painterly textures in my landscape photography.

I’ll slowly be sharing these paintings from my Future Flora series over the next couple of weeks, but if you want to skip ahead and see the paintings you can see them on my website - link in bio.

The series is predominantly oil, gouache, watercolour, cold wax and UV pigment ink on canvas. Sizes range from huge 180cm x 120cm down to mini 35cm x 60cm.

Sending you desert love 🌸🌵 by @gallerysmith_

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4 months ago

I took two plastic film cameras I hadn’t used in 16 years on a recent trip to Noosa. One broke (the plastic was brittle after all these years) and I lost the photos, but I got these peaceful moments from the other one. 🤍 by @gallerysmith_

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4 months ago

My dear friend @dylin_hardcastle who shares my love of mountains and deep time wrote this about my Liminality Antipodes series and the same sentiment applies to this new instalment, Auric Antipodes.
“To find a home in Liminality, in the threshold of a horizon, between deep sky and wide lake, where the near and far feel not so far apart, is to surrender, voluptuously, to something felt. It is an ability to sit between regions - opaque and edged - and to feel, instead, the incredible release of shapelessness. If a binary is two sides of the same coin, Liminality, perhaps, is the coin in motion. It’s the spinning, the gliding, the orbit… Circles of memory and dreams that slip into the before and stretch out into the after. Where the present is both a collision and a reckoning… Of all that was and everything that will become. Because, to me, it doesn’t matter where I’m going, only that I’m going.”

Edit: I’m proud that the first photograph, “Ruby” is a finalist in this year’s Northern Beaches Environmental Art & Design prize. Congratulations to all the other finalists! @magamnsw

Photographs from my Auric Antipodes series are available at 150cm x 100cm, edition of 8, DM to enquire. More can be found on www.kateballis.com taken in South Island, New Zealand by @gallerysmith_

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4 months ago

Part 2, reminiscing about New Zealand South Island this time last year. I use a full spectrum converted camera to see a frequency of light that is not ordinarily visible to the human eye. I love to believe it helps me see alternate dimensions, perhaps Middle Earth?! 🧚

Fine art landscape photos are available at 150cm x 100cm, edition of 8. Available to view on my website under Liminality: Auric Antipodes. DM to enquire. taken in South Island, New Zealand by @gallerysmith_

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6 months ago