Canadian sculptor Geoffrey Smedley was born in London, England in 1927, and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College in London. He served in the British Army (1945-48) as a member of the Royal Engineers – his training as an engineer would influence his artistic career. Early in his career Smedley worked in the “constructivist tradition, and participated in two exhibitions with the Systems Group – the first organized by the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1972, and the second at The Design Activity International in 1974. His method later became intuitive, mathematical and site-specific. Subsequently he evolved from using specific landscape sites to the use of language, and also came to question the notions of light, time and memory in his sculpture. He first came to Canada as a visiting artist at Queen’s University in 1977, and the following year joined the faculty of the UBC Department of Fine Arts, where he remained until his retirement in 1992. After his retirement he continued to work at his studio on Gambier Island, B.C., where he lived with his wife Brigid.
As a sculptor Smedley combined disciplines such as mathematics and philosophy with accomplished craftsmanship, and his finished works often functioned as metaphors for language, time and memory. His sculptures were exhibited at more than sixty galleries in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, and can be found in various public collections, including The Arts Council of Great Britain, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture. His sculpture "Rowingbridge" was a centrepiece at Expo 86 in Vancouver. His 2001 work "Piero en tête / Meditations on Piero" (often referred-to in his working notes as “Piero’s Head”) explored the links between architecture and other disciplines, such as geometry, cosmology and human anatomy, centred on Piero della Francesca’s attempts to draw the mathematically ideal proportions of the human head. Another work completed in 2012, "Descartes’ Clown", is a sculpture-installation that is a philosophical reflection on the mechanization of man. Shortly before his death Smedley completed another work on Piero and his book "De Prospectiva Pingendi", a book entitled "Beneath Appearances".
Geoffrey Smedley died suddenly on Gambier Island on 9 May 2018.
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1927-2018