Kirsty Smith is a practising image maker and PhD candidate in the school of visual communication. A life long participant of skateboarding and fashion photography her work has been published in Vogue and Harpers Bizarre while also featuring in leading European skateboard magazines, Sidewalk and A Brief Glance.
Kirsty’s practise engages with atheistic codes, visual originality and the rebellious attitudes which have come to signify the cornerstones of contemporary skateboarding culture. Exploring the subversive tactics employed within skateboard film’s, photographs and design, her research investigates and visually maps the consumption of skateboard media by the fashion industries. Through the examination of these interconnected frames the research reflects on the conflicting socio-economic dynamisms that has risen out of these practises and hypotheses filmic and photographic economic models in support of the continuation of a successful skateboard industry.