Keith Brown was born in Hexham, Northumberland, in 1947. He studied at Sunderland College of Art (1966-71) where he was awarded a 1st Class (Hons) Dip. AD. He studied as a postgraduate student at Manchester Polytechnic (1971-2) where he gained an HDA in Fine Art Sculpture and went on to study at the Royal College of Art, London, (1972-75) where he received his MA in Sculpture. He was a Fellow in Sculpture at Cheltenham College of Art (1975-6) and Junior Fellow in Sculpture at Cardiff College of Art (1976-77). Between 1997 and 1980 he taught as a part-time and visiting lecturer at several art schools in the UK, Europe and the USA. In 1980 he became a Senior Lecturer in Sculpture at Manchester Polytechnic; now the Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). In 1993 he became one of MMU's Principal Lecturers in Fine Art and became Head of the School of Sculpture, Time-Based & Digital Media in the Department of Fine Arts. He is currently Subject Leader in Sculpture on the BA Fine Art Programme and is also Director of Art & Computing Technologies for the Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art & Design (MIRIAD). He was awarded a personal chair as Professor of Sculpture and Digital Technologies at MMU in 2007.
As Founder and President of Fast-UK (Fine Art Sculpture & Technology in the UK) Brown has done much to encourage and support digital sculpture at a national and international level, with assistance from the Arts Council of England, Manchester City Council and MIRIAD.
Brown is currently one of the foremost digital sculptors working in Europe and has made regular representations at an international level as a contributor to, and organiser of, symposia and exhibitions in electronic and digital art. He has recently exhibited in New Zealand, Australia, China, Japan, Africa, Turkey, France, Czech Republic, Austria, Poland, USA, and the UK and, as a result, has gained international acclaim as a pioneer and leader in his field. Recent venues have been as broad and diverse as the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition (2002, 2003 and 2005), London, and SIGGRAPH Art Gallery in San Diego, Los Angeles and Boston (2003, 2004 and 2006).