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Adam Thompson - The Open College of the Arts

To find out more details about the transfer to The Open University see A New Chapter for OCA.

Adam Thompson

A range of materials are used in my practice to approach questions of value, entropy and understanding of the world around us. Site-specific installation, sculpture, and video are formed through processes of salvaging, selecting and recovering material that is close at hand and accessed in the locality, forming often temporary works reliant on a play between presentation and representation. My practice proposes we think of human activity as overlapping with natural history, that we are but coagulated matter, articulated by energy that eventually dissipates, cosmically aligned and bound to earth. These ideas are navigated through abject and poetic configurations of solely found materials redistributed in the gallery space largely unaltered, an economy of means that adds nothing physical to an existing state of industrial overabundance and avoids the trappings of art as labour and commodity.

By sifting, gathering and re-contextualising, I explore what occurs to things displaced, redundant and seemingly functionless, as they become incorporated into different lives and slip into new associations and tensions. Taking on an extreme ambivalence towards fabricated and found objects, trying to evade artistic will, the materials within my sparse installations exert their own logic. An attempt to extricate materials from their human captivity and uncover a strange new network of relations, a philosophical position determined to free metaphysics from its anthropocentric residues and reclaim it on behalf of a direct contact with the stark materiality of the world.

I have exhibited in a range of international solo and group exhibitions curated for various galleries, museums and project spaces, and been selected for a number of residency programmes, including recently at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul, Korea. I studied at Goldsmiths College, London where I graduated with a BA in Fine Art, Studio Practice and Contemporary Critical Theory (2001) and MA in Fine Art (2009) followed more recently by a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) at University of Suffolk, Ipswich. I am dedicated in sharing research and knowledge to provide quality teaching and to raising the standards of art through all levels of education. I am committed in supporting students and artists to expand their horizons and understanding of art practice, enabling potential new paths of discovery. Alongside my position with OCA, my teaching experience spans Further and Higher education institutions and I currently hold a Lecturer and Courses Leader position teaching Contextual studies, Fine Art, Drawing and Sculpture at Suffolk New College, Ipswich, alongside directing Atlas House, an independent organization supporting artists and arts value to society through community and education projects across the east of England.

www.adamthompson.co.uk
www.atlashouse.org