Adam Sime
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About
©2024 Adam Sime
I woke up one morning and started to paint. Some years earlier I had woken up and started drawing. No good reason to stop doing either has appeared.
My father’s (Ian Sime 1927 - 1989) career as an artist was like an Aesop's fable with the moral: Don't become an Artist. His repeated advice was to be suspicious of, and avoid, art schools, art teachers, commercial art galleries and their directors, art critics, art theory, and curators. By and large, for better or worse, that's how things have turned out. Growing up amongst his work and studios, it was clear from the start that he was manifesting something un-contactable on any other level. I took in his images as thought.
At some point I moved away from the gestural, spontaneous painted abstraction, towards a style generated from the black and white drawings I'd always done, influenced by truck signage, Persian miniatures,fabric in renaissance painting, Robert Motherwell, laundry detergent packaging, Krazy Kat, and Phillip Guston. The gestural work had referenced Arshile Gorky, Bonnard, Vuillard, aerial photographs.
These works attempt to reconcile, in a more considered manner, the experience of perception, the need for play, and the capacity for exploration.
Abstraction is balancing tensions – pattern vs surprise, surface vs depth, now vs then. The work is an analogue of a discrete consciousness, revealing its motility and particular texture. But its nomenclature is opaque, rudimentary, not fit for purpose.
No morphology, no taxonomy; we are still waiting for a Linnaeus or similar to crack its nut.
Curriculum Vitae
Born Melbourne 1957
2015 (May) Exhibition oil on linen, The Alderman Upstairs, Brunswick East
2009 (July) Exhibition oil on linen, Stephen McLaughlan Gallery, Melbourne.
2007 (July) Exhibition oil on linen, Stephen McLaughlan Gallery, Melbourne.
2006 Exhibition oil on linen, Stephen McLaughlan Gallery, Melbourne.
2005 Exhibition oil on linen, Red Gallery, North Fitzroy.
2003 Exhibition archival digital prints and oil on linen, Mario’s, Fitzroy.
2002 Exhibition oil on linen, Mario’s, Fitzroy.
2001 Exhibition archival digital prints, Mario’s, Fitzroy.
2000 Exhibition oil on linen, Mario’s, Fitzroy.
1999 Exhibition works on paper, Mario’s, Fitzroy.
1998 Exhibition oil on linen, Mario’s, Fitzroy.
1997 Exhibition oil on linen, Continental, Prahran.
1997 Exhibition of works on paper, Mario’s, Fitzroy.
1996 Exhibition of oil on linen, Mario’s, Fitzroy.
1995 Exhibition of works on paper, Mario’s, Fitzroy.
1991 Invited to submit work to Chaumont Poster Festival, France.
1990 Second run of small black and white self adhesive images. 4 kinds x 250. Large format black and white silkscreen poster ‘Harmonica’ 152.4 x 101.6cm Edition of 150, displayed on building hoardings, bridges, etc.
1989 Displayed work in public spaces in format of black and white self adhesive weatherproof stickers 6.8 x 10cm, 4 images, offset print, run of 250 x each kind.
1987 Exhibit works on paper and oil on board at Franklin Galleries, Franklin Street, Melbourne with Ian Sime.
1981 Move to Melbourne from country Victoria and rent studio space in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy.
1973 Began painting in oil under the tutelage of my father, Melbourne non objective painter Ian Sime (1926 - 1989) (q.v. Smith ‘Australian Painting’, Reid ‘Modern Australian Art’, Hughes ‘The Art of Australia’, Heathcote ‘A Quiet Revolution’.
Public Collections
Australian National Gallery (permanent poster collection)
St Vincent’s Public Hospital, Melbourne
Media
The Age 10/6/06 Megan Backhouse