In 2019 Ben Smith was commissioned by UK based Australian musician, Nick Cave to paint his portrait for his exhibition: "Stranger Than Kindness". The Nick Cave Exhibition is a journey into the creative world of the musician, storyteller and cultural icon.
The exhibition was to be shown at The Black Diamond, Søren Kiergaards Plads, Copenhagen from 23 March until 3 October. It has been postponed due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
The exhibition brings together large scale installations and original atmospheric soundscapes with more than 300 objects from Cave’s own collection, the Nick Cave archive at Arts Centre Melbourne, the collections of Royal Danish Library and a number of private lenders.
Nick Cave was the feature story in The Sydney Morning Herald's "Spectrum" magazine on 4-5 April with the Ben Smith painting covering the issue.
We have released a small collection of new works by BenSmith titled "Ascendancy, Love over Strife" with a short video by Ralph Hobbs introducing the exhibition.