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“why do birds suddenly appear”
Adam Sime
“why do birds suddenly appear”
18 February – 1 March 2025
hours:
Tuesday – Friday: 12pm – 7pm
Saturdays: 12pm – 4pm
admission: Free
“I like the ones I don’t understand”.
Gerard Richter.
“I like the ones I don’t understand”.
Gerard Richter.
Easy for him to say. I like the ones where the tension between Pattern and Surprise causes Optical Adhesion.
The tension is what I’m looking for.
When I first started looking, I was looking at my father’s paintings, and I could see his thinking made manifest – they were deeply personal “a revelation of the self to the self” as Seamus Heaney said of poetry. Then I looked at Bonnard, and Persian miniatures, and truck signage and laundry detergent packaging, Krazy Kat and Kandinsky, Robert Motherwell and Phillip Guston, then I looked at Anni Albers and Tomma Abts and more Tomma Abts.
My paintings are an aspect of my thought, long-considered, looking for the tension, looking for release, loaded with memory.
Adam Sime started painting in oils at the age of 16, learning technique and craft from his father, Melbourne non-objective painter Ian Sime.
Eschewing conventional art schooling, he has maintained his art making practice for over five decades, exhibiting at small informal gallery spaces while supporting himself with work in both hospitality and freelance illustration (he opened LongPlay Bar and Cinema in Nth Fitzroy in 2010, and Amarillo Fitzroy in 2017). The demands of running a small business have not stopped him from a continuing studio commitment.
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’.
Opening Night
Tuesday 18 February 5-7pm