COLLIDER PART 4, A REPRISE (THE END)
HARRY ADAMS
25 MARCH – 10 APRIL, 2022
COLLIDER Part 4 is the final chapter of HARRY ADAMS' Collider series, an extensive exhibition of brand new 'screen paintings' - a mixture of painting and screen printing - enveloping a grove of maturing oak saplings, nurtured with care over the last 4 years by the artist, and returning triumphantly to the scene of their first tentative steps into the real world.
In 2018's Nothing Remains Unchanged But The Clouds, Harry Adams exhibited those formative oaks as escapees from the painterly landscapes - an adversarial provocation to the traditional artform. Here, they return, boldly, in a coming-of-age, to stake their own place, in their own right, before being released into the wild.
From that first happening with us in 2018, through three exhibitions (IRL and online), and a publication, despite an unexpected and ongoing global pandemic, this completion of the Collider life cycle - subtitled A Reprise (The End), is a fitting metaphor for our times. The trees will continue to grow, and thrive. We will continue to grow, and thrive.
At the end, is anything ever really the end?
It’s complicated!
Firstly, Harry Adams is not one artist but two working under one name. They are mostly a painter, but have recently been using a process of screen printing to construct works in a painterly fashion by “colliding” and overlaying motifs from previous paintings they have made.
This exhibition will show a series of these ‘screen paintings’.
Secondly, this exhibition is a reprise: a reworking of an exhibition shown in London last year (2021) that opened as soon as the second wave (or was it the third?) pandemic restrictions were lifted. That exhibition was the result (in part) of the artists following a creative process that started in 2018. It has come to Airspace Gallery as that is where it all started and this is where it will end.
In 2018 Harry Adams first exhibited at Airspace under the title Nothing Remains Unchanged but The Clouds with a series of oil paintings. The paintings were mostly of imagined flat empty landscapes under big chaotic skies that were shown alongside 36 tiny oak saplings planted in handmade pots, thrown & glazed by the artists with help from a local ceramics studio.
The exhibition was playfully subtitled An Exhibition of Paintings vs Trees.
The saplings (in their pots) were sold as an edition during the exhibition with instructions to the purchasers to replant the oak saplings in the wild. Most were sold but the remaining few were returned to the artist’s studio where they continued to grow in captivity.
In 2019 Harry Adams had a solo show at The Eagle Gallery in London titled Victory Over the Sun. Referencing the Russian Futurist Opera of the same name for which Kazimir Malevich created his first Black Square painting, this exhibition featured paintings of spore-like black(ish) circles, one of the paintings from the Nothing Remains Unchanged But The Clouds series, and one of the oak saplings - now slightly bigger, replanted in a square concrete planter and exhibited on a sound emitting plinth. The sound being emitted from the plinth was a soundtrack to the exhibition recorded by the artists. It was also for this exhibition that they made their first “collider” screen paintings known as the Sun Trap Series.
Some say this exhibition was a premonition of the coming global pandemic, but the artists deny any insider knowledge or power to see into the future.
In 2020 there was a global pandemic and everyone had to go home. Harry Adams didn’t always stay at home as they had essential work to do in developing their “collider” process. During that year they made a series of 86 new ‘screen painting’ works, and (as all the galleries were closed) these were presented as an online exhibition under the title COLLIDER Part 1. For this Harry Adams claimed they were the result of:
In 2021 everyone was still mostly staying at home and Harry Adams set to work making a book from the screen paintings made for COLLIDER Part 1. In the book, COLLIDER Part 2 (the book) double vision, the images were reversed and mirrored so the book could be viewed “front-ways, back-ways, in a mirror, or on a Zoom call, without affecting the viewer experience”. The only text being the titles, colophon, and a response to the series of paintings written by an indigenous American from their cultural perspective in relation to the pipeline protests at Standing Rock:
The book was published with a folded insert about COLLIDER Part 1, and then Harry Adams set about making a series of larger scale “double vision” screen paintings based on the mirrored images from the book.
This series was then shown as COLLIDER Part 3 (an installation) over three floors at a “retro-futuristic art clinic” in the heart of Mayfair, London. For this exhibition, the (now even bigger) oak saplings/young trees were once again shown, presented on specially made plinths, that emitted a new ethereal soundtrack recorded by the artists.
As you can see from the installation shot of COLLIDER Part 3 the saplings are now rather tall and spindly.
This is because they have been grown in captivity in a sky-lit area of the artist’s studio where, unchallenged by natural elements, have grown straight up towards the light.
Whilst in art terms this mutant growth pattern provides a mild joke about creative aspiration and spirituality, in horticultural terms it could be seen as cruelty. So, at the end of COLLIDER Part 3 it was decided the young trees should be set free of their art shackles and planted out in the wild where they could perform their natural functions.
COLLIDER Part 4 – A Reprise (The End) is as such a planting ceremony. Here, for the last time, the young trees perform their role as apocalyptic cyphers of hope in the face of human calamity, and on the last weekend of the exhibition they will be taken by the artists and gallery director and planted in wild places where (gods willing) they can grow to full maturity.
The End
--------
Post Script(s):
1. It has been mooted that the artists be killed, chopped up and planted with the trees to aid fertilisation. Harry Adams is still considering the conceptual merits of this as a final and ultimate act of creative sacrifice.
2. It may be noted that not much is written about the paintings themselves here, and there is a lack of art-speak being used to qualify the work. Both are deliberate.
HARRY ADAMS is the pseudonym used to present the collaborative paintings by the
artists Adam Wood and Steve Lowe.
Born 1965 and 1966, East London and Slough.
Lives and works in London and East Sussex.
Studied at Derby, Southwark, Byam Shaw School of Art and University of Ulster.
Lowe also founded and runs the L-13 Light Industrial Workshop (helped by Adam), also home to the Harry Adams studio.
They have been making paintings and prints together as Harry Adams since 2008 but have been collaborating on a wide array of other projects (both audio and visual) since they met at art school in the late 1980s.
A full list of recent exhibitions can be seen at HarryAdams.org
Other current work and projects can be found on L-13.org
In 2018's Nothing Remains Unchanged But The Clouds, Harry Adams exhibited those formative oaks as escapees from the painterly landscapes - an adversarial provocation to the traditional artform. Here, they return, boldly, in a coming-of-age, to stake their own place, in their own right, before being released into the wild.
From that first happening with us in 2018, through three exhibitions (IRL and online), and a publication, despite an unexpected and ongoing global pandemic, this completion of the Collider life cycle - subtitled A Reprise (The End), is a fitting metaphor for our times. The trees will continue to grow, and thrive. We will continue to grow, and thrive.
At the end, is anything ever really the end?
It’s complicated!
Firstly, Harry Adams is not one artist but two working under one name. They are mostly a painter, but have recently been using a process of screen printing to construct works in a painterly fashion by “colliding” and overlaying motifs from previous paintings they have made.
This exhibition will show a series of these ‘screen paintings’.
Secondly, this exhibition is a reprise: a reworking of an exhibition shown in London last year (2021) that opened as soon as the second wave (or was it the third?) pandemic restrictions were lifted. That exhibition was the result (in part) of the artists following a creative process that started in 2018. It has come to Airspace Gallery as that is where it all started and this is where it will end.
In 2018 Harry Adams first exhibited at Airspace under the title Nothing Remains Unchanged but The Clouds with a series of oil paintings. The paintings were mostly of imagined flat empty landscapes under big chaotic skies that were shown alongside 36 tiny oak saplings planted in handmade pots, thrown & glazed by the artists with help from a local ceramics studio.
The exhibition was playfully subtitled An Exhibition of Paintings vs Trees.
The saplings (in their pots) were sold as an edition during the exhibition with instructions to the purchasers to replant the oak saplings in the wild. Most were sold but the remaining few were returned to the artist’s studio where they continued to grow in captivity.
In 2019 Harry Adams had a solo show at The Eagle Gallery in London titled Victory Over the Sun. Referencing the Russian Futurist Opera of the same name for which Kazimir Malevich created his first Black Square painting, this exhibition featured paintings of spore-like black(ish) circles, one of the paintings from the Nothing Remains Unchanged But The Clouds series, and one of the oak saplings - now slightly bigger, replanted in a square concrete planter and exhibited on a sound emitting plinth. The sound being emitted from the plinth was a soundtrack to the exhibition recorded by the artists. It was also for this exhibition that they made their first “collider” screen paintings known as the Sun Trap Series.
Some say this exhibition was a premonition of the coming global pandemic, but the artists deny any insider knowledge or power to see into the future.
In 2020 there was a global pandemic and everyone had to go home. Harry Adams didn’t always stay at home as they had essential work to do in developing their “collider” process. During that year they made a series of 86 new ‘screen painting’ works, and (as all the galleries were closed) these were presented as an online exhibition under the title COLLIDER Part 1. For this Harry Adams claimed they were the result of:
“a theoretical experiment invented by Harold Rosenbloom Snr for the HA Protocol 2013. The methodology required Marcel Duchamp in one wheelbarrow and Edvard Munch in another, with both being pushed at high speed towards each other through a large cardboard tube by two notable contemporary artists (possibly Martin Creed and Anselm Kiefer, but any would do) until they smash into each other. Rosenbloom conjectured that within the wreckage of that crash a new egalitarian and timeless art would be formed: part mechanical, part human, and of great terror and beauty.”
In 2021 everyone was still mostly staying at home and Harry Adams set to work making a book from the screen paintings made for COLLIDER Part 1. In the book, COLLIDER Part 2 (the book) double vision, the images were reversed and mirrored so the book could be viewed “front-ways, back-ways, in a mirror, or on a Zoom call, without affecting the viewer experience”. The only text being the titles, colophon, and a response to the series of paintings written by an indigenous American from their cultural perspective in relation to the pipeline protests at Standing Rock:
‘Indigenous people believe water is god. We are to burn to go back to dust and be with water. The elders spoke through the clouds. Going through the paintings reminded me of how good energy, dance, eating, hard work would bring a variety of the most beautiful colors. When police were there spraying us with water or rubber bullets in our face and arms (elders even) the sky would get grey or even black. I had never seen anything like it.’
Extract from COLLIDER Part 2 by Jamie Absalonson
Extract from COLLIDER Part 2 by Jamie Absalonson
The book was published with a folded insert about COLLIDER Part 1, and then Harry Adams set about making a series of larger scale “double vision” screen paintings based on the mirrored images from the book.
This series was then shown as COLLIDER Part 3 (an installation) over three floors at a “retro-futuristic art clinic” in the heart of Mayfair, London. For this exhibition, the (now even bigger) oak saplings/young trees were once again shown, presented on specially made plinths, that emitted a new ethereal soundtrack recorded by the artists.
As you can see from the installation shot of COLLIDER Part 3 the saplings are now rather tall and spindly.
This is because they have been grown in captivity in a sky-lit area of the artist’s studio where, unchallenged by natural elements, have grown straight up towards the light.
Whilst in art terms this mutant growth pattern provides a mild joke about creative aspiration and spirituality, in horticultural terms it could be seen as cruelty. So, at the end of COLLIDER Part 3 it was decided the young trees should be set free of their art shackles and planted out in the wild where they could perform their natural functions.
COLLIDER Part 4 – A Reprise (The End) is as such a planting ceremony. Here, for the last time, the young trees perform their role as apocalyptic cyphers of hope in the face of human calamity, and on the last weekend of the exhibition they will be taken by the artists and gallery director and planted in wild places where (gods willing) they can grow to full maturity.
The End
--------
Post Script(s):
1. It has been mooted that the artists be killed, chopped up and planted with the trees to aid fertilisation. Harry Adams is still considering the conceptual merits of this as a final and ultimate act of creative sacrifice.
2. It may be noted that not much is written about the paintings themselves here, and there is a lack of art-speak being used to qualify the work. Both are deliberate.
HARRY ADAMS is the pseudonym used to present the collaborative paintings by the
artists Adam Wood and Steve Lowe.
Born 1965 and 1966, East London and Slough.
Lives and works in London and East Sussex.
Studied at Derby, Southwark, Byam Shaw School of Art and University of Ulster.
Lowe also founded and runs the L-13 Light Industrial Workshop (helped by Adam), also home to the Harry Adams studio.
They have been making paintings and prints together as Harry Adams since 2008 but have been collaborating on a wide array of other projects (both audio and visual) since they met at art school in the late 1980s.
A full list of recent exhibitions can be seen at HarryAdams.org
Other current work and projects can be found on L-13.org
