Peter James Smith

About

Peter James Smith: “My work gathers together phases of scientific endeavour by placing data, text, references and graffiti across an illusionistic visual field. The gathering of data, codes, signifiers and histories into a current woven text is a particularly post-modern stance. It provides the artist with a curator’s brief. It sits well with the scientist who creates new work by formally referencing the pioneering work of others in the field. In this sense scientists don’t ‘appropriate’, they build on the past.” (1)


“Smith paints with an enviable fluency in two abstract languages – mathematics and art – each carefully presented to perform a specific role in his Socratic argument. Both languages strive for elegance, but we are used to seeing them apart, so he uses vernacular painting to seduce. Then through his arcane scientific medium he delivers a sudden virtuosity of spirit. Together, they create a crisp tension of ideas, at once charming and vigorous, with painterly abstractions of land or skyscapes beneath the overlay of words or data describing the scene, often scrawled in blackboard freehand. …Huge, bilingual abstractions loaded with the emotional charge of each language, art and science: double-barrelled depictions that simultaneously bring us closer to the moment of the event itself, incidentally consider the languages we use and take us to the edge.” (2)


Born Paparoa, New Zealand 1954.
Bachelor of Science (Hons), University of Auckland 1976;
Master of Science, Rutgers University 1980;
PhD, University of Western Australia 1984.

Since 1988 he has exhibited extensively in New Zealand. He has regularly exhibited in Australia since 1994. He is Professor of Mathematics and Art at RMIT University in Melbourne, where he is head of the School of Creative Media (photography, creative writing, screenwriting, multimedia, music, sound, digital art.)



(1) Artist’s Statement, 2000.
(2) Keith Stewart, ‘Life Science’, Listener, 2 August 1997.

 

 

CURRICULUM VITAE

 

1954 Born, Paparoa, New Zealand

 

1974-1979 Practising as a visual artist, exhibits at Barry Lett Galleries, Auckland, New Zealand.

 

1976 BSc (Hons) First Class, University of Auckland, New Zealand 
                        Thesis: Clones of Binary Operations on Boolean Algebras

 

1977 MSc, University of Auckland, New Zealand

 

1980 Master of Science (Statistics), Rutgers University, USA

 

1980-1984 Tutor, Department of Mathematics, University of Western Australia

 

1980-1987 Practising as a visual artist, Western Australia and Auckland,
                        exhibits at Barry Lett Galleries, Auckland, New Zealand.

 

1984 PhD, University of Western Australia, Australia
                       Thesis: Linear Regression with Censored Data—A Distribution-Free Approach

 

1985 Senior Tutor, Department of Mathematics, University of Western Australia

 

1985 Chairman of the Examining Panel for the Tertiary Entrance Examination,
                        Mathematics 1, for Year 12 students in the State of Western Australia

 

1986 Lecturer, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Curtin University of Technology

 

1987 Lecturer, Department of Mathematics, RMIT University

 

1987- Practising as a visual artist, Melbourne and Auckland, exhibits at Barry Lett Galleries, Auckland,
                        New Zealand;  Judith Anderson Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand; Gallery 101, Melbourne,
                        Australia; Milford Galleries, Dunedin and Queenstown, New Zealand

 

1994 Statistical Text, solo exhibition, Monash University Gallery, Melbourne

 

1990 Senior Lecturer, Department of Mathematics, RMIT University

 

1996 Associate Professor of Statistics in the Department of Statistics and Operations Research,
                        RMIT University, Melbourne

 

1996-2002 Head, Department of Statistics and Operations Research, RMIT University, Melbourne

 

2000 The Numbers Game, curated group exhibition by Zara Stanhope,
                         Adam Art Gallery—Te Pataka Toi, Wellington, New Zealand

 
 

2002-2007 Successful ARC Linkage Grant application: Censored Regression Techniques for Credit
                        Scoring;  Chief Investigator Professor Peter J. Smith; second CI Professor Robert Brooks,
                        Monash University Business; Industry Partner–ANZ Bank.

 

2002-2009 Head, School of Creative Media, RMIT University, Melbourne

 

2003 Master of Fine Art (Painting), RMIT University, Melbourne

 

2003 Professor of Mathematics and Art, RMIT University, Melbourne

 

2005 ARC Discovery Grant Assessor, Digital Arts

 

2006-2007 Chair, Academic Leaders Group, RMIT University

 

2008 ARC Discovery Grant Application: Truth + Beauty—Engaging the Mathematical Sublime.

 

2008 Truth + Beauty, solo exhibition curated by Claire Watson, Gippsland Art Gallery,
                        Sale, Victoria, Australia.