pj smith

Windless Bight13 October - 7 November 2012

Peter James Smith

Milford Galleries Dunedin18 Dowling Street (03) 477 7727 [email protected]

www.milfordgalleries.co.nz

1. Windless Bight (2011), oil on linen, stretcher: 910 x 1670 mm

2. Erebus (2012), oil on linen, stretcher: 910 x 1670 mm

3. Endurance Crushed (2012), oil on linen, stretcher: 610 x 760 mm

4. Iceblink at Windless Bight (2012), oil on linen, stretcher: 910 x 1210 mm

5. Ice Passage at Winterquarters Bay (2012), oil on linen, stretcher: 910 x 1210 mm

6. Stranded Iceberg (2012), oil on linen, stretcher: 310 x 1670 mm

7. Our Lady of the Snows (2012), oil on linen, stretcher: 910 x 1210 mm

8. Science (2012), wood, paint, size: 860 x 480 x 180 mm

9. Fracture (2012), oil on linen, stretcher: 1210 x 910 mm

10. Cross Fold (Antarctica) (2012), oil on linen, stretcher: 760 x 610 mm

11. Ephemeral (2012), oil on linen, stretcher: 610 x 760 mm

12. Scott's Last (2011), oil on linen, stretcher: 610 x 764 x 33 mm

Peter James Smith’s exhibition Windless Bight consists of a series of works have their

basis in his time spent in Antarctica as an Art Fellow. Stories of the continent have

been reinterpreted and retold with Smith’s evocative landscapes framed within

painted pages of notebooks, maps and postcards. His immediately recognisable

overlays of scientific facts and texts provide additional points of reference to the

works as well as provide tangible historical context for the paintings.

Thought of as overwhelming, vast and empty, it is the human narrative of the

Antarctic that Smith addresses in many of these works. Man’s physical presence is

indicated by the trappings of their explorations: skeletal ships and sleds figure as

ghosts of explorations past. This sense of a tangible historical ‘text’ is evidenced

further by the dog-eared and folded pages upon which the images are painted; the

human hand is seen in the expressive gestural brushstrokes and hand-writing of the

artist.

The name of the highest mountain on the Antarctic Continent, Erebus, comes from

Ancient Greek mythology and is the personification of darkness as well as being

synonymous with the underworld of the dead. This fits terribly with the mountain’s

recent history as the name is now intrinsically linked with the tragedy of those killed in

the 1979 crash of Air New Zealand Flight 901. Smith doesn’t place the mountain in

the centre of his painting, but uses the sweep of the dark, dry mountainsides and the

jagged teeth of ice floes to lead the viewer’s eye to the peak. His allusion to Hesiod’s

description of Erebus reinforces the sense of threat and peril underlying the work.

Smith’s landscapes possess the elements of simultaneous beauty and terror that the

Romantics called the sublime, the experience of which could bring about instances

of spiritual transcendence. Hints of the spiritual run through these works, manifested

through religious symbols, the otherworldly glow of the midnight sun or the secular

monuments that invite reflection on lives past. Smith tempers this with the rational

formulae, charts and diagrams that range across the surface of his paintings,

providing parameters for the viewers’ experience. The sculptural piece Science

encapsulates this: the rulers that comprise Smith’s Cross pay homage to empiricism,

but stand atop a box written with “Kismet” – fate.

All prices are NZD and include GST; Prices are current at the time of the exhibition

E X H I B I T I O N P R I C E L I S T

1 Windless Bight (2011) 15,000

2 Erebus (2012) 15,000

3 Endurance Crushed (2012) 6,000

4 Iceblink at Windless Bight (2012) 12,500

5 Ice Passage at Winterquarters Bay (2012) 12,500

6 Stranded Iceberg (2012) 7,500

7 Our Lady of the Snows (2012) 12,500

8 Science (2012) 4,000

9 Fracture (2012) 12,500

10 Cross Fold (Antarctica) (2012) 6,000

11 Ephemeral (2012) 6,000

12 Scott's Last (2011) 6,000

Peter James Smith 2012 CV Milford Galleries Dunedin www.milfordgalleries.co.nz

P a g e | 1

PETER JAMES SMITH b. 1954, lives Melbourne

Windless Bight (2012)

"The first, most striking thing about Peter James Smith - the man and the work - is the dual devotion to art

and science. The works are attentive to the actual visual character of particular things and there is an

enthusiasm for the abstract, rigorous discipline of mathematics." (1)

“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.” (2)

“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.” (3)

Peter James Smith is widely published as a mathematician and holds the degrees BSc (Hons), MSc, PhD

with a Master of Fine Art in Painting. He recently retired as Professor of Mathematics and Art, and Head

of the School of Creative Media (photography, creative writing, screenwriting, film and television

production, video production, multimedia, music production, digital art, computer gaming) at RMIT

University in Melbourne to paint and write full time. His paintings are held in many public, private and

corporate collections in New Zealand, Australia and internationally. In 2009/ 10 he was a New Zealand

Art Fellow in Antarctica.

1. John Armstrong, 'The Art of the Modern Sublime', Peter James Smith: Illuminated by Darkness, 2005

2. Artist Statement, 2000

3. Keith Stewart, ‘Life Science’, Listener, 2 August 1997


P a g e | 2

PETER JAMES SMITH

b. 1954, lives Melbourne

EDUCATION 2002 – 2003 MFA (Painting), RMIT University, Melbourne

1984 PhD, University of Western Australia

1980 MS, Rutgers University

1976 BSc (Hons), University of Auckland

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2012 Windless Bight, Milford Galleries Dunedin

On the Nature of Things, OREXART, Auckland

2011 Light, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne, Australia

Iceblink, John Leech Gallery, Auckland

2010 Nine Key Works 2002 – 2008 & Selected Sublime Echo Studies, milford galleries queenstown

2009 Histories Reprised From Art and Science, John Leech, Auckland

2008 Truth + Beauty (curated by Claire Watson), Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale, Victoria, Australia

The Sublime Echo, Milford Galleries Dunedin

2007 Truth + Beauty, Judith Anderson Galleries, Hawkes Bay

Truth + Beauty, Gallery 101, Collins St, Melbourne, Australia

Truth + Beauty, Brooke/Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

2006 Truth + Beauty, Milford Galleries Dunedin

Truth + Beauty, Edmiston Duke Gallery, Auckland

2005 Illumined by Darkness, Edmiston Duke Gallery, Auckland

Navigator, Milford Galleries Queenstown

Close to the Eastern Shore, Judith Anderson Galleries, Hawkes Bay

Illumined by Darkness, Gallery 101, Collins St, Melbourne, Australia

2004 The Substance of Clouds, Judith Anderson Gallery, Auckland

Stills from ‘Fading Light’, Bett Gallery, Hobart, Tasmania

2003 Fading Light, Milford Galleries Dunedin,

Fading Light, Gallery 101, Collins St, Melbourne, Australia

2002 Underlapping Science, Michael Nagy Fine Art, Sydney, Australia

Always Through the Dark; Notes on the Continuing Presence of History, Judith Anderson Gallery,

Auckland

2001 A Cinematic Trace, Judith Anderson Gallery, Auckland,

Underlapping Science, Gallery 101, Melbourne, Australia

2000 Marks of the Navigator, Judith Anderson Gallery, Auckland

View, Janne Land Gallery, Wellington

1999 Deep Field Measure, Janne Land Gallery, Wellington

It is by Gathering Data that we Come to Know about the World, Gallery 101, Melbourne,

Australia

1998 Elements, Gallery 101, Collins St, Melbourne, Australia

Making Notes on the Visible, Milford House, Dunedin

Remarks on Space·Time, Judith Anderson Gallery, Auckland

1997 Figuring the Drift of Stars, Judith Anderson Gallery, Auckland

1996 Data Frames, Janne Land Gallery, Wellington

Hypertext, Gallery 101, Collins St, Melbourne, Australia

1995 Signs of Man, The Suter Gallery – Te Aratoi o Whakatu, Nelson

Gathering Data, R.K.S. Art, Auckland

1994 Recent Work, Janne Land Gallery, Wellington

Statistical Text, Monash University Gallery, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

1993 Moa Walk, R.K.S. Art, Auckland

1991 Attractor, R.K.S. Art, Auckland

1990 Archimedes Crying, R.K.S. Art, Auckland

Archimedes Crying, The Suter Gallery – Te Aratoi o Whakatu, Nelson


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1989 Zero Crossing, Faculty of Visual and Performing Arts, Ballarat University, Ballarat, Australia

1988 Across Two Waters: A Survey, Faculty Gallery, Faculty of Art and Design, RMIT, Melbourne,

Australia

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2012 The Review, milford galleries queenstown

Time, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne, Australia

Sculpture, OREXART, Auckland

Chosen, milford galleries queenstown

2011 Visible/invisible, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne, Australia

Spring Catalogue, milford galleries queenstown

The Review, milford galleries queenstown

Between Heaven and Earth, Page Blackie Gallery, Wellington

2010 Small Works, Milford Galleries Dunedin

2009 Southern Landscape, milford galleries queenstown

Masterworks, milford galleries queenstown

2008 Masterworks, milford galleries queenstown

Orchestra, Sculptural Installation with Sound Artists Kipps Horn and Barry Hill, The Field, School of

Creative Media, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

Anthology, curated by Dianna Gold, Gallery 101, Melbourne, Australia.

2007 3 x 5, milford galleries auckland

Sight Scene: A top of the South Art Tour—Celebrating the Suter’s Collection, curated by Julie

Catchpole, The Suter, Te Aratoi o Whakatu

2006 Small Works, Gallery 101, Collins St, Melbourne, Australia

Recent Works: Peter James Smith, JS Parker, Kathy Barber, Scott McFarlane, Cheryl Lucas, milford

galleries queenstown

Salon, curated by Catherine Wolfhagen, Bett Gallery, Hobart, Australia

Location South, milford galleries queenstown

2005 Art at Heart, selected work from the Suter Collection, The Suter, Te Aratoi o Whakatu

Crossover: 13 Artists Investigating Cross-Cultural Influences, CUSP Gallery, Melbourne, Australia

2004 Textures of Place, milford galleries queenstown

Inaugural exhibition, Judith Anderson Gallery—Hawkes Bay

Compendium, ICON Museum of Art, Deakin University, curated by Martina Copley, Melbourne,

Australia

The Transit of Venus, milford galleries queenstown, Dunedin and Auckland

Artfair 04, Royal Exhibition Buildings, Melbourne, Australia

2003 Inaugural Exhibition, Michael Nagy at Jersey Road, Michael Nagy Fine Art, Sydney, Australia

Compendium, Platform 5, curated by Martina Copley, Melbourne, Australia

Future Perfect, curated by Gerard Castles and Dick Bett, Bett Gallery, Hobart, Tasmania

OverView, Is As: Landscape as Metaphor, Milford Galleries Dunedin

Strata, Postgraduate exhibition, Class of 2003, RMIT University, Melbourne

2002 The Postcard Show, Linden Gallery, St Kilda, Melbourne, Australia

The 2002 John Leslie Art Prize: Art refers to Environment, juried exhibition of finalists, Gippsland Art

Gallery, Sale, Victoria, Australia

Wyndham City Contemporary Art Prize 2002, juried exhibition of finalists, Melbourne, Australia

Synergy, A Collaborative Exhibition Between Artists and Scientists, curated by Dick Bett, CSIRO

Marine Laboratories, Hobart, Tasmania

Melbourne Artfair 2002, 8th Australian Contemporary Art Fair, Royal Exhibition Buildings,

Melbourne, Australia. (Represented by Gallery 101, Melbourne, Michael Nagy Fine Art, Sydney.)

Bendigo Bank Tattersall’s Club Art Prize, juried exhibition of finalists, Brisbane, Australia

2001 Australia---You Are Here! Four Perspectives of Landscape Through Painting and Photography,

Gallery 101 at Flemington, Melbourne, Australia

2000 Annual Exhibition, Mobile Art, Auckland

The Numbers Game, Adam Art Gallery--Te Pataka Toi, Wellington

Melbourne Artfair 2000, 7th Australian Contemporary Art Fair, Royal Exhibition Buildings,

Melbourne, Australia.

SQuaRE 2000, Gallery 101, Collins St, Melbourne, Australia


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Mathematics and Art, Bond University Art Gallery, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

1999 Catalogue Show, Milford Galleries Dunedin

Salon des Refusees, curated exhibition of entries from the Archibald and Wynne Prizes, S. H. Ervin

Gallery, Sydney, Australia

Looking South-Across Time, Distance, Place and Culture, Milford Galleries Dunedin

Director’s Choice, Gallery 101, Melbourne, Australia

Exhibition Space, Judith Anderson Gallery, Auckland

1998 Summer Survey 1998: Robert McLeod, Allen Maddox, Peter James Smith, John Parker, Philippa

Blair, Judith Anderson Gallery, Auckland

Picturing History, Centre of Contemporary Art, Christchurch

Sixth Australian Contemporary Art Fair, Royal Exhibition Buildings, Melbourne, Australia

Art for Life, Centre of Contemporary Art, Christchurch


1997 3 Major Surveys of Modern New Zealand Art, Milford Galleries Dunedin


1996 Shifting Ground, Moonee Valley Festival Contemporary Art Prize 1996, curated by Sharyn

Dawson, Melbourne, Australia

Fifth Australian Contemporary Art Fair, Melbourne Royal Exhibition Buildings, Melbourne, Australia

The Land, Centre of Contemporary Art, Christchurch

Re-view, Gallery 101, Melbourne, Australia

1995 Artworkz Seven, 101 Collins Street Acquisitive Prizes 1995, juried exhibition of finalists, Gallery 101,

Melbourne, Australia

1994 New Year/New Work, R.K.S. Art, Auckland

1992 A Breath of Fresh Art-A Selection of Recent Art Works by 35 New Zealand Artists, The Bath·House

Art and History Museum, Rotorua

1986 Inaugural Exhibition, Editions Gallery, Fremantle, Western Australia

SELECTED AWARDS & SCHOLARSHIPS

2009 Antarctica New Zealand Arts Fellowship

1999 Eighth Annual Wallace Art Awards in Association with the Visa Gold Art Award, Wallace Trust

Gallery, Auckland

1996 Moonee Valley Festival Contemporary Art Prize 1996,

1995 Herald-Sun Art Award, finalist, Herald and Weekly Times, Melbourne, Australia

COLLECTIONS

Department of Mathematics, University of Auckland

Auckland Hospital Board, Auckland

New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Victoria University of Wellington

Rothmans Cultural Foundation

RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

Herald and Weekly Times, Melbourne, Australia

Air New Zealand

Eastern Energy, Melbourne, Australia

La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia

101 Collins Street, Melbourne, Australia

National Australia Bank, Melbourne, Australia

Massey University, Albany Campus, Auckland

Wallace Trust Collection, Auckland

The University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia

The Suter Gallery – Te Aratoi o Whakatu, Nelson

BHP Billliton Collection, Melbourne, Australia

The University of Melbourne, Australia

Australian National Parliament House Collection, Canberra


P a g e | 5

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS 2007 Smith, Peter James, Rediscovering lines of longitude—signs of ’New Capture’ for art

practice at postmodernism’s demise, in Visual Animals—Crossovers, Evolution and New

Aesthetics, Ian North (ed), Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia

2005 Smith, Peter James, The text stares back, refereed conference proceedings, School of

Creative Media, RMIT University

2000 Smith, Peter James, 1st Australian Conference on Mathematics and Art, Keynote speaker,

Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia

1999 Smith, Peter James, Auckland Writers Festival, Invited speaker, , 28 May

1994 Nelson, Robert, Speculations on the Empirical Lyre of Peter James Smith, Statistical Text,

exhibition catalogue, Monash University Gallery, Melbourne, Australia

1996 Stewart, Keith, Ditch—Peter James Smith: painting the gap, catalogue essay, Gallery 101,


1997 Stewart, Keith, Life Science, New Zealand Listener, 2 August

1999 Marshall, Ben, Painting x Numbers, Australian Style, 31, 101

Kerr, Elizabeth, Looking South - across time, distance, place and culture, catalogue

essay, Milford Galleries Dunedin

Smith, Peter James, Orbital Elements, Art News, Spring, 24 & 25

2000 Gregory, John, Peter James Smith: It is by gathering data that we come to know about

the world, Eyeline, 41, 48--9

Baskett, Pat, All-rounder for our post-modern times, New Zealand Herald, Auckland, NZ,

24 April

Stanhope, Zara, The Numbers Game, catalogue essay, Adam Art Gallery, Te Pataka Toi,

Wellington, NZ

Suzie Campbell, ‘Beyond the Known World: The Paintings of Peter James Smith’, Art New

Zealand, 97, 82--85

David Famularo, Mathematical Musings, The Dominion, Wellington, NZ, 17 November

Radok , Stephanie, A water or a light, Artlink, 21, 51--52

Copley, Martina, Terrain, catalogue essay, A Cinematic Trace, Judith Anderson Gallery,

Auckland

Martina Copley, The Ship’s Wake, catalogue essay, Underlapping Science, Gallery 101,

Melbourne; Michael Nagy Fine Art, Sydney, Australia

2001 Hutchings, Patrick, Number is the Wisest Thing, catalogue essay, Underlapping Science,

Gallery 101, Melbourne, Michael Nagy Fine Art, Sydney, Australia

McGahey, Kate, The Concise History of New Zealand Artists, Painters, Printmakers and

Sculptors, Gilt Edge Publishing: Wellington (citation)

2002 Synergy, exhibition catalogue, CSIRO Marine Research Laboratories, Hobart, Tasmania

2006 McCulloch, A., S. McCulloch and E. McCulloch Childs, McCulloch’s Encyclopaedia of

Australian Art, The Miegunyah Press: Victoria, Australia, p897 (citation)

2005 Armstrong, John, The Art of the Modern Sublime, catalogue essay, Illumined by Darkness,

Edmiston Duke Gallery, Auckland, NZ

2007 Furphy, John, Australian Art Sales Digest; A Survey of Australian and New Zealand Sales of

Art at Auction over ten years from 1993 to 2007; Acorn Antiques: Armadale, Victoria,

Australia

2008 Watson, Claire, Truth + Beauty, catalogue essay, Truth + Beauty, Gippsland Art Gallery,

Sale, Victoria

Pearce, Suzannah (ed), Who’s Who in Victoria; Inaugural Edition, Crown Content:


Signs of Historical Narrative (2006)

pj smith

Documents

smiths landscapes

series of works

windless bight13

smiths evocative landscapes

human hand

antarctic continent

viewers experience

smith tempers