ADAM NORTON

This exhibition was inspired by travel, in particular those trips where you find yourself nimbly moving from one place to another, drawn in by inclinations and succumbing to a floating feeling. For me, the same sensation can occur when reading static artworks, when you allow yourself to melt into a setting or atmosphere that has been created.

The works in this exhibition exceed boundaries and while a sense of vastness is created, they provide a certain intimacy giving room for one’s own adventure. We are suspended in Space; gliding above the Kimberley; emerging from an otherworldly icy pool. We are directed and disoriented; Nature has felled a man-made structure; elsewhere the body merges with or is landscape.

Through various pictorial techniques, the distance between the picture and the viewer is collapsed, an experience akin to a cinematic journey. A sense of a (new) Australian Gothic prevails - post-apocalyptic and/or romantic outcomes are entirely possible, and the associated and inexorable drama feels more real, as you melt into it.

Samantha Ferris, June 2023

Artwork details: Adam Norton, Deep Space Window I, 2016, synthetic polymer & enamel paint on aluminium, 42 x 52 cm. Private Collection. Photo: Docqment

Installation images by Docqment