Bernadette Smith and Mark Elliot-Ranken

have been practising artists and art educators for over 20 years. They are represented in international art collections both corporate and institutional. Mark is currently a fine art PHD candidate and Bernadette has a Master of Fine Arts. They are thoroughly familiar with contemporary art practice and understand client needs.

Though our works are quite stylistically distinct we have always remained critically and materially supportive of each other’s endeavours.  Equally when either of us has an individual exhibition we look to the other to provide some of the critical response any artist needs to push their work to the limits of what is possible.

Travelling together we have been to north-west Australia, South-East Asia and the multi-faceted palimpsest of China. These journeys remain with us long after the plane has landed.As artists now based in Lake Macquarie, overshadowed by its nearby hub of energy production and resource extraction, we are all too aware of the fragility of the environment. Our work resonates with this sense of the temporality of our planet.