About this Event
We will be celebrating Dunne's newest exhibition in the RSA's historic CoffeeHouse space.
‘The Long Way Round’
This exhibition presents 18 sculptures by artist-maker Adam Dunne. The works are primarily cast in concrete, with selected pieces carved from Spanish alabaster.
The title, The Long Way Round, alludes to journeys in many forms, including the artist’s own sustained relationship with making and sculpture. A recurring staircase motif suggests ascent, perpetual effort, struggles through labyrinthine passages, or contemplative wandering, and can be read metaphorically in relation to diasporic experience.
The title also references the physical process of casting, playfully echoing the phrase the wrong way round. This points to the artist’s ongoing negotiation between positive and negative forms: what begins as the top becomes the base, and solid structures are transformed into voids. Staircase forms are inverted through casting, resulting in recessed, negative spaces within the final works.
Dunne’s practice occupies a space between the domestic and the ornamental, while evoking the language of monumental Brutalist architecture typically experienced at a far larger scale. The intimate dimensions of the sculptures allow them to function simultaneously as artefacts and design objects, sitting comfortably within the setting of the Royal Society of Arts’ CoffeeHouse.
Adam Dunne
Adam Dunne is a creative maker based in southeast London where he has made and exhibited for the last twenty years. He was raised in Wiltshire before moving to Nottingham, where he studied Fine Art. He subsequently moved to Tokyo and then London. All of these places, with their standing stone circles and burial sites, have left a mark on his practice, as he continuously explores the realms of mythological entities, artifacts and relics.
Dunne’s work sits across the whimsical and the weighty, serious and playful. Drawing inspiration from the processes of construction, sawing, drilling and casting, as well as the materials themselves of steel, concrete or plaster, Adam explores the contrast between this physical reality and our increasingly digital world. The resulting sculptures occupy a space between the domestic and the industrial – hinting at larger scaled works and wide-sweeping mechanisms, but in actuality occupying little space. The whimsical contrast is highlighted, in the staircase motif, reminiscent of mathematical conundrums, mazes, labyrinths and architectural and childlike models.
Adam has exhibited nationally including the ING Discerning Eye, the Sussex Contemporary, the Festival of Arts Bath and the Bethlam Gallery. He has undertaken numerous private commissions and also sells his artwork in Holloways of Ludlow in Bath.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
The RSA, Durham Street Auditorium, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00
