Denis Smith can vividly recall the moment in 2022 when he discovered his social media accounts had been hacked.
While Smith still had his website and a YouTube channel, his Meta-based existence, Facebook and Instagram, had simply been obliterated by an anonymous hacker.
It was a massive blow for the artist who had relied heavily on the social media platforms for promoting his striking photographic artworks and connecting him to his loyal customer base. Smith says the hacking experience was “a substantial financial blow”.
“It was literally a year ago when I walked out of a SALA exhibition and I had an email from Meta saying that my password had been changed,” he says. “So I’m walking down the road through Port Adelaide, thinking, this feels different. My pulse is racing right now just talking about this.
“I jumped in the car, got home, and sure enough, it was just gone – gone. The hacker’s MO is they hard grind your password and then they put porn up on my Insta, so that gets pulled down. Then they contact you and say, ‘We can get it all back for you’.”
Artist Denis Smith. Photo: Dave Laslett
As it turns out, Smith decided he didn’t want to rush to get it all back. What he did was reassess the very nature of social media, his personal relationship with it and the way he used it for his work.
Those explorations have culminated in his 2023 SALA exhibition, Duality, which he says “explores the complex interplay between an artist’s online persona and their true self in a post-social media world”.
“It just got crazy for me really quickly and now it’s sort of rebooted and I think that cycle of change is probably what this SALA is about,” he says.
“The year I picked up a camera for the first time in 2009, I joined Instagram and I spent 15 years chasing ‘likes’. I also had some very rapid international fame and got locked into this cycle of making work that revolved around my social media reactions. Then, almost a year ago, that all stopped.”
At the time of the hacking, Smith was at the height of his success, with more than 60,000 social media followers and a huge demand for his unique “ball of light” photographs which fetch around $3000.
His work is created through light painting, a photographic technique where the photographer moves a light source while taking a long-exposure photograph. Smith, who uses specialised light tools, is best known for his luminous “balls of light” images, which are created at night when he swings a light source as he moves in a circle. The end result is a glowing sphere of light that seemingly hangs in the air, or sits in the landscape, like magic.
An example of Denis Smith’s “ball of light”.
“Over 10 years leading up to the hacking, I had built a business around my light painting that didn’t exactly rely on social media, because I’m a bit old-school I have a solid email database, but I was making good work that people would love and click ‘buy now’, or they’d sign up for one of my workshops or buy some of my painting tools,” he says.
“I was also flying around the world doing workshops and tutorials, so things were going very well. Then, in that one instant, I lost 50 per cent of my annual income.”
Smith survived financially by relying on the other half of his business, a commercial video and photography company he runs with business partner Sam Collins. But his passion has always been for creating art works through photography, something he’s done since he moved from New Zealand to the Barossa Valley in 2009.
Light painting by Denis Smith, above and below.
Smith and his wife Kyrie had made the move to Kyrie’s hometown in South Australia after Smith suffered mental health issues due to work pressures. At the time, he was a high-powered sales executive in New Zealand whose life began to unravel as he struggled to maintain the pace and lifestyle.
He says he’d start his days with a cigar and a couple of Red Bulls and, with work lunches and dinners, he also soon developed a serious drinking issue. Eventually, everything came crashing down.
“I had a severe mental breakdown; I was cooked. We moved to South Australia and I was living in my in-laws’ spare bedroom and I picked up a camera and just started walking around the Barossa taking photos.”
What started as a hobby soon became an obsession and Smith began experimenting with other forms of photography, including light painting. He first created his “ball of light” in 2009 and has continued to create them in stunning outdoor locations around South Australia, as well as interstate and overseas.
Smith is adamant that his love of photography literally healed him through the darkest days of his life, allowing him to reinvent himself as an artist and a teacher.
“That little ball of light saved my life,” he says.
Denis Smith’s creates his balls of light in exotic locations.
Today, reflecting on the hacking experience, Smith says he now sees the online violation as yet another opportunity to reset and reinvent – both personally and professionally.
“I got into this cycle where my work was about income, so the work had to be really safe,” he says. “So those round orbs became my signature move and I sold 1750 of the tools that you need to make those balls. I had a substantial business just with the light painting tools.
“But what it meant was that I had to be continuously making work that culminated in someone pushing the ‘buy now’ button and my tutorials became a bit robotic; the light painting became a bit robotic. I was making work that I was proud of but it wasn’t pushing any real technical barriers for me.
Smith says light painting has allowed him to reinvent himself as an artist.
“So what this last year has been about is not just finding a new income stream but I’ve made this revelation later in life that I’m actually an artist. I make work that makes me feel joy, pain, all the stuff, and I’m now pushing boundaries technically and I don’t really care if others can or can’t learn how to do it.
“A year ago, I had a building, a studio, a gallery and all that had to go. So I literally now create art in our spare room – that’s my studio, and I have really gone back to basics. I turn off the lights and I am making work that feels really right. I think the work is stronger.”
While he hasn’t embraced social media like he once did, Smith says he has rebuilt his website and set up a new Instagram page mainly because “I missed my community”.
Smith’s 2023 SALA exhibition, Duality, will feature 12 of his latest works, plus a kids’ zone, and he will also be performing daily live demonstrations of light painting.
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“I have a creative bomb inside of me just waiting to go off and I am now ready to go nuts just making work. I don’t need to make money out of the art; the other side of my business will pay the bills. I can now just create with total freedom and if the by-product is that other people love it, that’s great.
“The work doesn’t have to be safe, it just needs to be real.”
Denis Smith will present Duality at Vitalstatistix, 11 Nile Street, Port Adelaide, from July 30 to August 8 as part of the 2023 South Australian Living Artists (SALA) Festival. SALA officially opens on August 1 and will feature nearly 700 exhibitions across Adelaide and regional SA over the coming month. View the full program online here.
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