Queensland

Paul Adair has a Bachelor of Photography with 1st class honours (2005) from Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. In 2003 Adair was included in the group show Fresh Cut, at the Institute of Modern Art, and the solo show, A Perfect Crime at Starter Space, Queensland Art Gallery. He has had solo shows in Queensland Centre of Photography and Logan City Art Gallery (2006), Stills Gallery (2007, 2008). He has been included in numerous the group exhibitions, including Hatched, at Perth Institute for Contemporary Art (2006), Museum of Brisbane's Temperature 2 (2009), the prestigious Photo L.A. (2007, 2009), and The University of Queensland Art Museum's The State we're in exhibition as part of the third Queensland Festival of Photography (2010). Adair was awarded an Australia Council Studio Residency in Los Angeles (2009).

Adair's works have been acquired by both corporate and institutional collections. He was the recipient of the Artworkers Award, RAWspace, Brisbane in 2006, & the Queensland Art Gallery, Hobday and Hington Bursary in 2005. References in publications include The Australian Art Collector, Art Monthly Australia, as well as frequent admissions in The Courier Mail.

Adair's work challenges our understanding of truth and artifice. Drawing attention to photography's indexical quality, Adair creates images that are hyper-real, too perfect, yet defy digital enhancement. Each photograph's precise formal composition gives way to the crudeness of his self-made constructions. Adair's works epitomize the disappointment and mediocrity that are the flipside of hope and fantasy, comparing the visual to an experience like the embellishment of a theme park or photographs on a fast-food menu.

Adair's series Decoy (exhibited at QCP in 2006 and Stills Gallery in 2007), is perfectly titled, referring both to the decoy in hunting and the natural world but also to his deceptive visual language. Combining taxidermised countryside animals, a squirrel, trout, & birds, with objects he has sculpted himself, a pile of tyres, the stump of a tree, a tin drum, Adair creates miniature stage sets which speak of the human affect on natural habitat. Despite their cartoon like quality, we are presented with a constructed reality rather than work of fiction.

Positioned on circular bases and set against a stark white background these motifs suggest the fetishised object on plinth within a museum or gallery, of cut-out species devoid of habitat on the crisp pages of encyclopaedias, and of beloved kitsch ornaments on the cluttered mantle piece of a relative.

Three-Hole Mountain Inn (exhibited at Stills Gallery 2008, and in part at the Museum of Brisbane in 2009 and UQ Art Museum in 2010) follows a similar process to Decoy, where Adair physically constructs all of his sets and props before photographing them. The method of re-creating and re-presenting objects has become integral to developing his practice and continues his interest in the relationship between sculpture and photography.

For more information, please visit Paul Adair's gallery website:
www.stillsgallery.com.au/adair