ABOUT MY PROCESS

My Work

These sculptures are both works in their own right and models for larger versions. 

All the work is inspired by nature. My years of studying the patterns, forms,  structure made of nature have been the source for these small-scale works in clay, steel, plaster, and paint.

I see the works as drawing in space. They are three-dimensional lines and planes, playing with positive and negative space with many edges and profiles.

This work is an outcome of a desire to work freely, fast and small. The sources range from the geometry of rocks to the flow of water and the shape of trees. All these matters in a dance with space.

The five Covid 20 works are inspired, as the Organelle and Cuboid series, in nature, but they are meant as expressions of human emotion. 
With finding out about the outbreak out of a news Sarrs virus in China, I became very worried. Both for myself and for everybody. I started a new body of work, I wanted to do more with some works and ideas from the 80s. These are figurative in concept. They are extremely three-dimensional and are very complex forms. 

The drawings are of the Pilbarra from the last decade.

The latest, from a trip to Marble Bar in August

– Mark Grey-Smith

BIOGRAPHY / SOURCES / INSPIRATIONS

Mark Francis Grey-Smith

I grew up in an amazing environment of nature and culture. My parents, Guy and Helen Grey-Smith were both artists and they built a house with two studios, a pottery and an extensive productive garden on top of the Darling Scarp in Darlington, overlooking Perth in Western Australia. They were of that pre-eminent amazing generation who survived the Second World War after growing up through the Depression.       

With my sister Sue, I had a unique upbringing. Our world at home involved painting, screen printed textiles, printmaking, production ceramics, fruit trees, vegetable garden, goats, chickens and pigeons - all of which we ate, along with the stone ground whole meal bread that Dad made.
We had weekend visitors from the city and Darlington became an Art Hub as such. We also went to the Anglican Church. We travelled extensively throughout Western Australia and the Eastern States, as well as Cambodia and Bali.

The landscapes of the North West of WA were an important source of inspiration for me with its dramatic illustration of form and structure. 
The observation of nature in all possible ways is the core of Culture and particularly Art. 
The family trips to Bali and Cambodia, with all the temples and sculptures, along with looking at international art magazines and art books, developed my interest in Sculpture.

My early exposure to Contemporary Sculpture was through Art International and Art Spectrum as well as the standard texts on the Modern period. Henry Moore, Lynn Chadwick, Kenneth Armitage, along with the Russian Constructivists, Cubo Futurists, Picasso, Hans Arp, Eduardo Paolozzi and later Eduardo Chilida, were important early influences. The public artwork of Howard Taylor, as the only contemporary abstract sculptor in WA, was also a significant influence.

I had a short interest in Anthropology until I came across semiotics and post structuralism. I was taught welding by Bob Juniper and had some basic training at WAIT in Perth. I was subsequently accepted into the Chelsea School of Art in London in 1969. The most influential teachers were George Fullard, Olif Richmond and Nigel Hall. I had the fortune to have Eduardo Paolozzi as an external assessor. 

Conceptual, minimal, instillation, earth and performance art were in the early stages of emergence at this time, along with the strong tradition of British neo-figurative  structural investigation. After some experimentation with the installation format I began my investigative approach to what I now terms as my condensed essentialist sculpture.

I developed an interest in perceptual geometry, along with a strong interest in the discoveries of Science including Physics, Cosmology, Archaeology, Geology, Biology, among others. 
These areas have had such a profound influence on cultural creative thinking in contemporary society. In particular the relationship of post Einstein physics and the challenging art of the 20th century.

I have always wanted to learn about nature and us as an outcome of nature.  

Of great importance to my work has been the opening up of our understanding and visualisation of form and structure at all the scales of nature.
In our time we now have many profound illustrations of the interconnectivity of pattern and structure from the atomic to the cosmic. 
Such tings as dark energy, dark matter, black holes, Einsteinian Gravity, and quantum mechanics play an important role in my thinking and work.

On returning to WA in 1973 I found a disturbing lack of interest and energy in the local art world.
Along with others I founded the experimental art gallery Praxis Inc. The intention was to foster contact in WA with national and international art practices and provide a venue for adventurous local artists. It had many forms and was eventually morphed into the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art in the nineties.
As well as teaching at Curtin School of Art and other institutions, I exhibited in Perth and nationally such as at the Australian Sculpture Triennial at La Trobe in Victoria in 1981.

In 1983, with my wife Helen and son Tim, we moved to the ACT to undertake a Postgraduate Diploma at the Canberra School of Art. Our second son, Leigh, was born 1986.

I taught at the Canberra School Art from 1984 to 1997 in the Foundation and Sculpture departments. I exhibited in the ACT and NSW in many solo and group exhibitions.
I currently have 2 works as sculptures on display at the grounds of the ANU in the  ACT. 

Returning to Western Australia in 1998, we moved to Fremantle and from there to the present I have continued my sculpture practice. 
I have exhibited at Sculpture by the Sea Cottesloe 5 times.
A prominent work on public display is the sculpture Centerfold. This work overlooks the Indian Ocean at North Cottesloe, it’s very well known, liked and photographed.
I have also had several one man exhibitions from early 2000's to the present.

I think the central role of sculpture is as an essential and powerful method of expressing our relationships with each other and Nature.