Terry Smith studied at Goldsmiths School of Art and Birmingham Polytechnic.  He received the Henry Moore Fellowship (Byam Shaw School of Art) in 1998, the Sargent Fellowship in Rome in 1998/9, was research fellow at Field Institute, Hombroich Museum, Dusseldorf in 2002 and artist in residence at WASPS studio, Glasgow in 2003. In 2008 he received The Paul Hamlyn Artist Award. From 2008 – 2010 he was Drawing Fellow at Wimbledon School of Art.

Smith’s highly regarded eclectic practice explores architectural interventions, live performance, film and drawing. In 1994 Smith started breaking into derelict buildings to create ‘wall cuttings’, often inaccessible to the public. An unofficial intervention, Capital, in The British Museum cutting into Gallery 49 walls underlines Smith’s iconoclastic approach. This all led to an invitation in 1996 to make works in the derelict Bankside Power Station as part of the Tate Modern development. Tate’s arts professional’s tours of the old building were the only opportunity to see the works, and typically Smith not only abandoned the wall works, but also his works on paper made at the same time. 

Smith has had numerous solo exhibitions, installations and performances including The British Museum (1995); Kombirama, Zurich (1996); Konstantin Adamopoulos. Frankfurt (1998); Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Carrillo Gil, Mexico City (1999); LUX Gallery, London (2000); Broken Voices, Riverside Studios, London (2007); The Foundling, a multi-disciplinary audio/visual installation, commissioned by Gill Hedley for The Foundling Museum (2009); Combine, V22 Space, London (2012); Parallax, a major showcase of over fifty works, curated by David Thorp for John Hansard Gallery, Southampton University (2011/12) and the Drawing Center, New York (2013) and Foundlings at the Hunt Kasner Gallery, Prague and Ca’ Pesaro Museo Internazionale d’Arte Moderna, Venice (2014) 

Terry is lead artist for workinprogress, delivering Venice Agendas since 2011 and is a Director (alongside David Gryn) of Strangelove, the international time-based media festival.