Harry Adams

Our Rout of San Romano (after Uccello)

Painting – the dialectic between mark and image. Steeped in a modernist tradition without any notion of cultural progress. Preferring the flat world – fun in the sand rather than mountains of theoretical resolution. Play with creation and destruction as themes and devices. Exploring rather than proclaiming discovery – hovering between certainty and uncertainty. Great ideas, horrific structures. The dirty mark and fine lines. The order of human cultivation and the wildness of nature. The high, the low, the holy: Man’s constructs. The madness of it all. The aspiration to make great things of awe and wonder whilst also preferring the quiet and humble. Reaching out and tearing down, wanting love and laughing at all. Contradiction. But always show love and care – kindness and thought – excitement and thrill of existence. Glory in the existential and experiential. Loving artspeak in all its nonsense. Wanting straight talk. To view the meaning of art through the life of creation rather than the death of the object/commodity – and accept the losing battle. Trickery and truth – the glow of shifting sands. Stockpiling for the apocalypse.

Harry Adams is the pseudonym used to present the collaborative work of artists Adam Wood and Steve Lowe.

HACV

Born in 1965 and 1966, East London and Slough. Lives and works in London and Hastings, alone and with his partner, has one child and is childless.

Lives and works in London and Hastings.

Solo Exhibitions and Projects

2013 – Harry Adams – The Lay of the Land – Annunciations, Ecstatic Revelations and Other Accurate Misrepresentations – ART&SPACE Gallery, Munich, Germany

2012 – Harry Adams – A Short History of Our Progress Part 3. L-13 Light Industrial Workshop, Clerkenwell.

2011 – Harry Adams – A Short History of Our Progress Part 2. L-13 Light Industrial Workshop, Clerkenwell.

2010 – Harry Adams – A Short History of Our Progress. L-13 Light Industrial Workshop, Clerkenwell.

2008 – Pandemonium in the English Landscape. The Aquarium L-13

2007 – Celebrity Arse Face. STDINC Gallery.

2007 – Pack It In! Ink-d Gallery, Brighton

2007 – London -The End. The Aquarium L-13, London

2005 – Up to Your Neck in It – Internet project

2007 – Birds are Bad – Bird flu terror project. Internet project

2006 – Little Bits of Death on a Sunny Summer’s Day. No Glory Gallery, London.

2005 – Satan’s Rat Trap and the Mouse that Wound Up Dead (Hey Ho Silver Lining). No Hope Gallery, London.

Group shows

2011 – Men Breaking Ice and Fetching the Body of Toni Kurz – Paintings that Celebrate Heroic Futility, with Billy Childish, London.

2010 – ART HATE on Cork Street. Cork Street, London.

2010 – Visions and Failures – London Art Fair, Art Projects.

2010 – World Art Hate Day.

2009 – Infiltrations – L-13 Light Industrial Workshop

2009 – National Art Hate Week – arthate.com

2009 – With or Without God – L-13 Light Industrial Workshop.

2009 – Dark Times, Editor’s Choice – F-ish Gallery, Hastings

2009 – Mission Accomplished. – L-13 Light Industrial Workshop

2009 – Red Rag to a Bull – Save Our Urchins Art Appeal, redragtoabull.com

2009 – Visionaries – Wallspace, London Wall and the Greenbelt Festival, Cheltenham.

2008 – THE ASSISTANT for Mayor. Mayoral election campaign. The Aquarium L-13 and miracleartandinspiredsanity.com.

2007 – Eat Shit, Millions of Flies Can’t Be Wrong. The Arts Organisation, Nottingham and Mare Street, Hackney.

2006 – The Aquarium All Stars Christmas Spectacular

2005 – Pax Britannica – A Hellish Peace. The Aquarium.

2004 – I Hate Your Guts – The Aquarium Gallery

2003 – The Situationist International and After – The Aquarium Gallery

1992 – 2005 Innumerable band performances, recordings, radio sessions etc.

1992 – Univeristy of Ulster – mid year MA show.

1991 – Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child – pop-up show at the Film Collective, Camden.

Awards and prizes

Scholarship and materials grant, Byam Shaw School of Art.

Byam Shaw Print Prize – Runner up 1990

Byam Shaw Print Prize – Winner 1989

Cub Scouts fancy dress 1st Prize 1975

Hide