Geoffrey Mark Matthews attended Richmond School (1965-73) and studied art and design at Scarborough Technical College (1973-4) and Leeds Polytechnic (1974-7). He collaborated with poet Michael Blackburn and musician Paul Buckton on performance and gallery projects from 1976-9. In 1977 he was co-founder of Leeds Musicians Collective with Paul Buckton, Pete Beresford and others. As a member of Creative Arts North in Leeds he received a Yorkshire Arts Association Award in 1978 for his Art House installation project. He worked as an exhibition designer in London from 1979 to 1986, spending six years at the National Maritime Museum, the final year as a curatorial assistant helping catalogue the oil paintings collection. In 1986 he was appointed lecturer in museum design at Humberside College of Higher Education. He completed his PhD at University of Hull in 1996 while continuing to lecture at University of Lincoln in the school of architecture. There he was programme leader for the Masters course in Design for Exhibition and Museums from 1996 until he retired in 2014 to return to full-time creative practice.