His work is primarily conceptual and engages a variety of media forms including sculpture, video, and installations.
[1] He studied English literature at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire, where he received a BA magna cum laude in 1978.
After a failed attempt at a career as a professional ice hockey player, he continued his studies in literature at Oxford University in England, and received a D.Phil.
At SAIC he teaches studio and seminar courses in Exhibition Prosthetics; Dissemination; the Hans Ulrich Obrist Archive; and Theorizing Disability.
A related book by Grigely, based on a series of incremental exhibitions he organized in an atrium setting, is MacLean 705 (Bedford Press, 2015).
His "Postcards to Sophie Calle," originally published in the Swiss periodical Parkett and reprinted several times, is considered a seminal text in disability studies.
He has focused on four bodies of archives in recent years: Grigely's work is in a number of institutional and private collections.