Adam Boyd
Degree: MFA Painting
University: The Slade School of Fine Art
Graduation Year: 2022
New Blood Art Commentary
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Adam Boyd’s work straddles mediums, temporalities, and references. His work aligns the archaic medium of textile in the form of traditional felting and quilting, with 3D-printing and lidar scanning technology: the futurism of his work is embedded in the present, which in turn is constantly sparking with the past. There are zones to these paintings, evoking the interlocking and overlapping, as well as the unhinging, of component parts. The different media the artist uses make up the various elements of the composition.
Science fiction is an important touchstone for Adam Boyd, whose work draws in art historical and pop cultural allusion: a theatre of the subliminal, as in David Salle’s bold reinvention of minimalism. The treatment of acrylic paint gives it a screened radiance: in these works there is the semblance of a portal, a circle of standing stones or a digital sifting of reality. His works are a point of departure spliced with a point of arrival, featuring the complementary aims of contrasting materials. They feature textiles seeking the abstract alongside digital photography preoccupied with tactile surfaces. Materials are a matter for the imagination; imagination is the material that makes something of matter.
Artist Statement
The content Boyd is drawn to, tends to embrace the fugitive, immaterial or ethereal. He employs diverse craft-biased channels, in order to materialise these fleeting observations. Boyd often documents phenomena refracted by the urban environment, permeating the domestic. His research orbits pop cultural & art historical content which, in turn, harbour traces of much wider philosophical and scientific debate. A fascination with the tropes of science-fiction has become an internal filter for the quasi-ecclesiastic, supernatural imagery he favours. Boyd aims to situate his practice as a syncretic testbed, where ideas and processes coexist and cross-pollinate. An extensive, and often unlikely, range of materials and processes have been utilised to transcribe the subtle qualities of Boyd’s digital photography. The simultaneous alignment of traditional felting and quilting, with 3D-printing and lidar-scanning technology, offers-up works that seem to stand autonomously from the original catalyst; they sit in the in-between. Collectively, these compositions take on a taxonomic function, a pictorial sense of balancing which, to Boyd, feels akin to the consideration of opposing modes of thought.
Solo Exhibitions
(2022) Causal Thread, The Briggait, Glasgow
(2021) Strand Systems, Litla Gallerý, Hafnarfjordur, Iceland
(2019) Synthespians, Six Foot Gallery, Glasgow
(2018) Solaristics, Mount Florida Gallery & Studios, Glasgow
Group Exhibitions
(2022) Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2022, Humber Street Gallery & Ferens Art Gallery, Hull
(2022) Fragments, Omer Tiroche Gallery, London
(2022) Prelude to Space, Stokey Popup, London
(2022) A Feast for the Eyes, StART Art Fair Seoul 2022, Seoul
(2022) The Slade School of Fine Art Degree Show, The Slade School of Fine Art, London
(2022) S P I I I I I N E L E S S, UCL Art Museum, London
(2022) HEADLESS, The Island, Bristol
(2022) Colour/Pigment/Poetry, The Slade School of Fine Art, Online
(2022) Why Don't You Dance?, ASC Gallery, London
(2022) NOW Introducing 2022, Studio West, London
(2021) nature/nurture, Aora Space, Online
(2021) Dreamlands: Part One & Two, OHSH Projects, London
(2021) StART Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery, London
(2021) SÍM Residency Open Studios, SÍM Seljavegur, Reykjavik
(2021) material remains, Young Space, Online
(2021) Printed Matter (Foolscap Editions), Collective Ending, London
(2021) When Was the Last Time You Saw the Sea?, Youkobo Art Space, Tokyo
(2021) Vignettes and Pathways, Crownpoint Studios Project Space, Glasgow
(2021) to be a shell, Queensrollahouse, London
(2021) Colour/Collage/Poetry, The Slade School of Fine Art, Online
(2021) Screen Test, WASPS Artist Studios, Online
(2021) Every Other Seat - DUST Rising, Newcastle-under-Lyme Town Centre & Better World Festival, Regent Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent
(2020) Windows and Mirrors: Transformation and Awakening during lockdown, Slade Society, Online
(2020) Slade Runner, ASC Gallery, London
Competitions, Prizes & Awards
(2022) Bloomberg New Contemporaries
(2019) Euan Uglow Scholarship
(2016) Aon Community Art Award
(2013) George & Cordelia Oliver Drawing Scholarship