SALLY SMART completed a Master of Fine Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts in 1991 and is currently a Vice-Chancellor’s Professorial Fellow at University of Melbourne. She was awarded a prestigious Australia Council Fellowship in 2014 and was a Sackler Fellow Artist-in Residence at the University of Connecticut, USA in 2012. Her major public art commission Shadow Trees was installed in Docklands, Melbourne in 2014.
Recent exhibitions include: Bessie Davidson & Sally Smart: Two artists and the Parisian avant-garde, Bendigo Art Gallery (2020); Manifesto, Kayu Lucie Fontaine, Bali (2019); The Violet Ballet, ACE Open, Adelaide (2019); NGA Play: The Ballet Russes, National Gallery of Australia,Canberra (2019); Staging the Studio (The Choreography of Cutting), Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne (2017); The Choreography of Cutting, Postmasters Gallery, New York (2016); Odyssey: Navigating Nameless Seas, Singapore Art Museum (2016); Conversation: Endless Acts of Human History (with Entang Wiharso), Galeri Nasional Indonesia, Jakarta (2016); Six Degrees of Separation, Galeri Canna, Jakarta (2015); Dark Heart: 2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2014); Negotiating This World, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (2013); The Pedagogical Puppet, University of Connecticut, CT., USA (2012); Contemporary Australia: Women, Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), Brisbane, Australia and No Name Station, Iberia Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China. Smart is represented in significant public and private collections including: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; The Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; GOMA/Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; The University of Melbourne Art Collection, Melbourne; Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery, Toi o Tamaki, Auckland, New Zealand; Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Ithaca, NY, USA; The William Benton Museum of Art Connecticut’s State Art Museum, USA; British Museum, London, UK; Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt, Germany; and the International Collage Center, Pennsylvania USA.
Smart has served on the boards of leading Australian galleries and arts organisations including the National Gallery of Victoria (2001–2008) and the National Association for the Visual Arts (2018–2020), and is currently a member of the National Gallery of Australia Council.