Mick Smith is a painter and sculptor working in the North-East of England. Mick is primarily an oil painter who also has 20 years experience of sociological exploration through my art practice.

New Teeth for the Old Cog is about the unheard working classes - the daily labour they performed: repetitive, intricate almost choreographed in collaboration with machinery. We've become removed from these old manual skills. 

The Machines repurposed as art, engage the viewer in thoughts about how they may have once been used by the people who brought them to life. The art takes a step or two from the original purpose of the machines, further obscuring their previous functions encouraging us to wonder at the skills, now lost of their human operators.