Mr Adam Gillam

Course director

• Fine Art BA (Hons)

Revelling in material and visual flippancy, I fidget, probe and tweak the abundant dark matter of regurgitated studio experimentation, and collected pound shop tat. The resulting accumulations present a potential, momentary resolution between improvisation and refinement, realised through drawings, paintings and photographs.

Recent works have been made using a medium format a film camera, where the fixed point of the mounted camera acts as an anchored framing device within a dynamic, ever-evolving and improvised making arena in front of the lens. Through a combination of various materials, printed, drawn and taped, and the part-obscured reflection of myself as a reluctant performer and the making space, the works are playful, theatrical. Framed by the camera, they appear to invite the viewer, as though looking through a window, to connect the elements into some narrative.

I have nationally and internationally  including The Way We Work Now Camden Arts Centre (2005), Brussels Biennial 1, Show Me Don't Tell Me, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2009), Z(A)RT, curated by Jan Hoet, ABTART Gallery, Stuttgart (2010), Adam Gillam, Joe Orton, Kenneth Halliwell, Ancient and Modern, London (2011), Melanchotopia, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2011) and solo exhibitions including I am definitely coming for longer if I come again, KLERKX, Milan (2008), Ideal Paste, Tintype, London (2013), Stop Bugging Me – Frame 1: Adam Gillam, Tintype, London (2015), In Constant Use, Tintype, London (2020).

I recently presented the paper Not Knowing Me, Not Knowing You at the conference On Not Knowing: How Artists Teach, at Glasgow School of Art in June 2023.