Alice Adams

Alice’s paintings are a representation of ‘Life Online’, from the point of view of, a regular 24 year old who has grown up on the internet. She is part of the last generation who only just remember a life before the internet, growing into their teens learning to lead a dual life between the real and online world.

 

The paintings play with ideas of Space ‘inside the internet’ drawing similarities between the endless world behind the framework of a screen, and the infinite possibilities which could be framed in the context of a painting. You can reinvent your entire world on the internet in the same way a painter can on the surface of a canvas. This is freeing and endlessly exciting all at once and at the same time chaotic and restrictive!

 

The layers and materials in the paintings slip between digital and painterly, playing with the optical effect of contrasting digital and spontaneous marks on the surface of a painting. A continuous exploration into the ways the digital world can inform a physical practice of painting.

 

Lately, Alice has been using ‘emoji’ imagery in her paintings – symbols commonly used in everyday communication without much thought. These tiny pictures can send every kind of message – angry, flirty, passive aggressive which Alice plays with in her work. Alongside this new(ish) technology, she uses visuals from retro 1980’s Sci-Fi and Technology magazines, they discuss space travel and new inventions. Juxtaposing old fantasies of the future alongside the maybe disappointing reality of now.

 

Alice’s paintings are dense and two dimensional, a nod to the world behind the screen she delves into to create her work.  You could spend a lot of time looking at one of her paintings trying to figure out what is going on inside her head. You can appreciate them formally – the tension between pattern, colour and depth – and you can wonder about the conversation happening between technology, culture and communication.