Martin Smith established his first studio in Suffolk in 1974 while working as a part-time ceramic technician at Camberwell School of Art and Crafts.

Martin Smith’s first solo exhibition was held at Atmosphere, London, in 1978 but early recognition was mainly in Europe with group shows in Bern and Zurich, Switzerland; Rosenthal Studio Haus, Munich, Germany; and Het Princesshof, Leuwarden, Netherlands; and a solo show at Gallerie de Witte Voet in Amsterdam in 1979.

His first major solo show, Forms Around a Vessel: Ceramics by Martin Smith, was curated and mounted by Leeds Art Galleries at Lothton Hall in 1981 and then toured to Nottingham, Bath, Bolton and the Crafts Council Gallery, London, in 1982.

Through the 1980s and 1990s he showed regularly at the Garth Clark Gallery in New York and Los Angeles as well as Gallerie de Witte Voet, Amsterdam, and Contemporary Applied Arts in London. This phase of his practice was marked with a retrospective exhibition at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, in 1996. This brought together work from both public and private collections throughout Europe covering the period 1976–96 and concluded with a new body of work. The architect John Pawson designed the exhibition.

Up to this point all work had been individual ceramic pieces, exploring aspects of place and space and using a minimal vocabulary of basic geometric solids and the material qualities of ground and polished ceramic surfaces. However in 2001 an invitation to make a site-specific piece for Tate St Ives presented the opportunity to work on a larger scale with multi-part pieces, exploring aspects of sequencing and the interaction with changing ambient light conditions. Wavelength consisted of ten large, truncated cones with reflective internal surfaces and hidden colour that interacted with the changing atmospheric colour resulting from the movement of the sun during the day and the state of the tide.

This was followed by two multi-part pieces titled Binary Shift and Tectonic Drift, shown at Garth Clark Gallery, New York, in 2002.

In 1999 Martin Smith signed to the Barrett Marsden Gallery – now Marsden Woo Gallery – in London, who exclusively represent him in the UK. He continues to exhibit there and in Amsterdam.