PIERMARQ* is pleased to present Take Me to the River , featuring a striking body of work from Australian artist Adam Lester. Lester’s work investigates the duality and relationships between people, places and objects to create new narratives and interpretations. As a child of the post-modern era, influences such as pop-cultural motifs, rock’n’roll mythologies, spiritual iconography and quasi-scientific mark-making permeate Lester’s practice. These iconic symbols are complemented with a bold, vibrant palette which create highly kinetic visual assemblages - a nod to the aesthetic language of pop art.
Lester’s work resolves the friction between high and low culture by viewing the seemingly mundane through a lens of humour, curiosity and child-like optimism. His new body of work, which will appear in the upcoming exhibition Take Me to the River (19th August - 5th September) demonstrates Lester’s nostalgia and sentimentalism toward bygone eras. A sense of escapism is another prominent thematic as Lester employs modes of transport and notions of travel as both subject matter and material.
Imagery of Jetliners from the 1970s & 1980s, ‘the golden age of air travel’, symbolise the artist’s longing to explore somewhere new and exotic after months of confinement to his studio during this period of universal stagnation. The employment of reclaimed truck tarpaulins as the artists canvas contributes to the narrative while also providing a unique patina, which carries its own history. "As I work, I navigate the patches, seams and stains, and incorporate them as part of the composition" the artist explains. Lester encourages his viewers to find beauty and meaning in the unexpected.
