Sally Smart is a leading contemporary artist recognised for large-scale cut-out assemblage installations and increasingly, performance and video, her practice engages identity politics and the relationships between the body, thought and culture including trans-national ideas that have shaped cultural history. Her interest in female representation is enacted through various methodologies including cut-outs and collage using textiles in large-scale installations, as well as video, performance, sculpture and painting.

In 2019 Sally Smart was commissioned to create a work responding to the Australian expatriate artist Bessie Davidson’s work for an exhibition at the Bendigo Art Gallery. Smart made a dance film titled The Artists’ Ballet, an interdisciplinary project, evolved with dancers Jo Lloyd and Deanne Butterworth.

Discussing this work Smart says:
‘In considering the life of Davidson I have included Margaret Preston and their decade long relationship through a tumultuous time in human history. The dance performance embodies timeless themes and psychological tensions for these women, grappling with the avant-garde in art and life, at a traumatic period in human history (war, isolation, gender and modernity). The dance performance creates a contemporary lived presence and connection to the art and lives of women artists.'