Neural Architecture - Geoffrey Schmidt

Geoffrey Schmidt has an ongoing interest in the human condition, emotional and vulnerable behaviors, meditations on awareness and impermanence, and the disconnect between reality and the mind. He uses visual communication to navigate the complexities of existence and to find meaning amidst the ever-shifting landscape of context and interpretation. For the artist, memory also serves as a pathway that bridges the past and present to the future. Memory therefore connects us to significant moments, relationships, and sensory experiences.

Neural Architecture is a visual mapping of such memory, expressed through intricately composed collections of blocks of black colour, strings and rocks. These maps lead nowhere, and cannot be used to direct or accurately record. They are maps with no answer or question, no measured units or topography; maps that can only imply an idea and suggest a philosophy or way of looking; maps that combine the individual and the collective; maps that then mutate into the unknowable.

Geoffrey Schmidt is a conceptual artist based on the Cassowary Coast in Far North QLD. After completing a Degree in Fine Art at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University (1987), Schmidt spent ten years working in performance art and presenting work around Australia, including at the Institute of Modern Art, Artspace, Canberra Contemporary Art Space and Perth Institute of Contemporary Art. His art practice has since shifted over the past three decades as a necessary response to personal circumstances. Schmidt has experienced a series of four debilitating heart attacks and battles with depression and anxiety. His work has evolved into primarily two-dimensional realms (painting and digital drawings), however his latest series is more architectonic. Schmidt lives with his partner of almost 30 years, and describes himself as a gay man, a Buddhist, a bit of a recluse and a lover of German synth pop music.

Starts 1 August 2025 and ends 14 September 2025.