Simon Mark Smith

Simon Mark Smith (born 1965) was the first disability issue based artist to break into the mainstream music world in the UK. Other disabled artists, notably Ian Ian Drury, had disabilities, and did mention disability, for example in his song Spasticus Spasticus Autisticus. Disability Issue based art, known as Disability Disability Arts, was a spearhead section to the disability rights movements in the UK in the 1980's and 1990's. In 1993 Smith released an album called "Entitled". He called his band Simon Smith and the Useless Eaters. The album included 2 commercially viable pop rock songs focused on disability issues. The first was Soci-At-Ease which looked at the relationship of disability within society and personal relationships and the second was Grateful which was a critique of charities being a vehicle for people and businesses to get cheap publicity at the expense of disabled peoples' status within society. "Entitled" was given good reviews within the mainstream media, including best album of the week in the Big issue. , Melody Maker, however, decided to use the release as an opportunity to deride disabled people and came up against the scrutiny of the disability movement. . Other media broadcasts included ITV's Link , BBC's One in four and Radio 4's Does He Take Sugar.
From 1985 to 1988 Smith attended Chelsea School of Art where he gained a BA in Fine Art. After leaving college he pursued a career in painting, exhibiting in the Laing Gallery in Newcastle, The Diorama's "Out of Ourselves" exhibition in London, The Mcintosh Gallery, Crawford Street, and a number of other galleries. Born with no lower arms and deformed lower legs, the cause of which was unknown, his right foot was amputated at the age of 13. His involvement with disability led him in his early career to focus on disability issue based art. Within a few years of exhibiting though, he became disillusioned with the art world as a vehicle for promoting disability politics, citing that generally the audiences were mainly already aware of the issues. He then decided to use music as a vehicle instead. In 1993 he released "Entitled" through Stream Records. After a few years Smith realised that he was becoming stuck within a disability issue role and decided to back away from the disability arts world. Smith continued to write songs, but avoided bringing his disability in to view, especially when promoting his music. During this period he wrote and recorded over 300 songs most of which he gave away for free on the Internet. By 2012 his Facebook Artist page gained a following of over 160,000, which by 2015 had been reduced to around 130,000. Although shunning disability issue based art for himself Smith became part of the Art Council's influential advisory group IDEAG in 2008, which helped set out the Art Council's policy regarding disability issues and Disability Arts. Smith continued to paint and from 1983 worked on computer graphic paint boxes. In 2014 he exhibited a show entirely based around digital art at The Little Chelsea Gallery. In 2006 he was part of a documentary following two artists painting on the same canvas made by Jack Pizzey called "Canvas"H.
In 2010 he released an album called "Wonderful Life", then in 2012 he released a charity Christmas single called Christmas Day, in 2017 he released two albums, "Fluid Air" and "Memory", the latter was almost entirely written using virtual musicians.
As of 2017 Simon lives in East Sussex and continues to write and record songs, paint, write and work as a commercial photographer.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu