Keir Smith; contemporary sculptor
Hyfler/Rosner
Sculptor whose contemporary vision had its roots in the
Renaissance
Ann Elliott
Tuesday April 3, 2007
Guardian
Examples of his work and more articles:
http://www.thelondongroup.com/artists/smithk.html
http://www.sculpture.org.uk/image/000000100144-0-size640x480
http://www.jesus.cam.ac.uk/news/sculpture/03smith.html
http://www.artistsineastlondon.org/04_butlers/03text.htm
The sculptor Keir Smith, who has died at the age of 57 from
cancer, was an artist of distinction and unusual vision. He
dedicated his life to his art, looking at and writing about
the arts of the past which nourished his contemporary
practice as much as his interest and respect for the art
that was going on around him. He was also a sensitive and
dedicated teacher.
Named after James Keir Hardie, the first socialist Member of
Parliament, Keir was born in Gravesend, Kent. His father was
a member of the Labour party, and a local councillor,
working at the docks in Tilbury. His parents believed
strongly in education, and encouraged their four children to
achieve. Keir was educated at Collier Road secondary school,
and at Northfleet and Gravesend grammar school. He studied
fine art at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, where his
mentor was the painter Ian Stephenson, whom Keir followed to
Chelsea School of Art. It was at Chelsea that he moved from
painting to working in three dimensions.
Art and architecture of the past, archaeology, mythology and
landscape informed his early work. He dallied for a while
with performance art, through slide shows in which he
documented himself performing in the landscape, using
objects that he had made and then articulated in different
ways. These were shown in London at the Air gallery in 1977
and at the Acme gallery in 1980, and were his first solo
exhibitions after leaving university.
His work in the public realm developed with early
commissions for Grizedale Forest, Cumbria, where he was
twice artist in residence (1979-80 and 1981-82). In fact,
Keir was often chosen for outdoor sculpture projects during
their formative years - Grizedale and Yorkshire sculpture
park in the early 1980s, the Forest of Dean sculpture trail
in 1986, and later, Sculpture at Goodwood, West Sussex, now
the Cass Sculpture Foundation in 1997 are important
examples.
His first experience of a group exhibition was the Northern
Young Contemporaries at the Whitworth art gallery,
University of Manchester (1973), in which he was a
prizewinner. Another exhibition, this time in Newcastle upon
Tyne, also changed his life. When working on Ceres at the
Spectro gallery in 1981, he met Clare Rowe. They married in
1997.
The sources for Keir's mature work were based in the art,
architecture and sculpture of the Italian Renaissance. He
was passionate about little-known painters and sculptors as
well as the masters, learned Italian and visited Italy
regularly. The church of St Sigismondo in Cremona lies at
the heart of many of his later works, most directly in
Stefano (1997). Enabled by the Cass Sculpture Foundation,
this was his largest bronze sculpture. Its subject is the
first Christian martyr, St Stephen, who was stoned to death
for his beliefs and teaching; hence the cairn of "golden"
stones, and the single stone on the altarpiece.
Keir's writings were extensive, personal, and at times very
amusing. He was also somewhat akin to a gentleman
pamphleteer, in that each of his later exhibition
catalogues, many of which he published, contained his
learned essays on the works that inspired him.
Keir's own vision, however, was entirely contemporary. His
stone carvings and woodcarvings were spare and direct, with
clean line and pure surface. Bronzes were first modelled,
then cast, either at Wimbledon College of Art, where he
taught, from 1991 until his death, or at his studio in
Butley Mills, near Orford in Suffolk. Both were small-scale
foundries, but Keir made his pieces in sections, which were
then bolted or welded together to gain a larger presence.
Drawing was vital to Keir, not so much as plans for
sculpture, but works of tangential subject matter, often
worked carefully in pencil and watercolour or made in
acrylic over long periods of intense activity. He was never
without a sketchbook. Towards the end of his life, during
bouts of chemotherapy, unable to sleep at four in the
morning, he would walk to the Thames, where he drew and
painted the water, bleak compositions with broken wooden
poles rising through the surface.
The sculptural frieze for Henrietta House, Richmond, London,
sited at Henrietta Place, was Keir's most ambitious
commission, completed in 1992. Working through the Public
Art Development Trust, he designed the frieze on the theme
of the history of buildings, from the cave to the tower of
One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London. These frontal
sculptures were carved in deep relief, much bolder and more
three-dimensional than the shallow carving that bas-relief
allows. He employed geometric form and references to
elements of his favourite buildings, whether significant or
utilitarian.
Keir was a kind and considerate man, driven by his work,
sociable, funny and self-deprecating, but with no false
modesty. He was a good teacher, liked and admired by his
students, and greatly respected by his fellow sculptors. He
is survived by Clare, his mother, a brother and sister.
· Keir Owen Walter Smith, sculptor, born February 1 1950;
died March 7 2007