T E R R Y- S M I T H

1956
born in East London
1972-74
East Ham College, Foundation
1974-78
Goldsmiths School of Art, BA (Hons) First Class
1984-85
Birmingham Polytechnic, MA Fine Art

Collections

Arthur Andersen, UK; British Museum, Prints and Drawings; Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela; Werner H Kramarsky Collection, New York; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Carrillo Gil, Mexico City; Jose Noe, Guadalajara, Mexico;
John Walters Collection, USA

Terry Smith is an installation artist and film maker whose site specific architectural interventions have been shown throughout the world. Smith has made
major installations at the British Museum and Tate Modern and in 1999 and 2003 exhibited video commissions at the Venice Biennale.

“Structural intervention within architecture is not new, but Smith differs from artists such as Matta-Clark and Whiteread in that he is primarily concerned with drawing, a visual rather than a structural interference of space....

The rare opportunity to work at the British Museum came at very short notice forcing Smith to work fast and instinctively and giving the final work the air
of an idea whose time had come ... Smith hacked his way along the length of the gallery, carving an ornate classical capital over eleven metres long and
five metres high. The effect was as stunning as it was unexpected ...”

Rob Kesseler: Capital, British Museum
Untitled 1995

“ The variety of surface marks is surprising. One admires the way a viciously planed, bevelled edge acts like a punctuation mark in the flow of panels; an array of extrusions which resemble rainfall on a lake; or elsewhere, an arsenal of invasive nails. But how such effects were achieved - presumably by
gallery assistants trying to beat the clock - throws it all into some kind of perspective. Smith’s intervention is a compulsive viewing experience built around a solid core of mundane accident, an engagement with history which happens to
appear utterly self-contained. And he makes it look easy.”

Martin Herbert: Strip, Eagle Gallery
Time Out, 2 October 1997

Interior Ca' Rezzonico 1999 photograph