The Kingsmen

Adam Douglass attended King’s High School from 1993 to 1997 and gained an honourable mention for Painting and Art History in his Seventh Form year. He was also the Deputy House Captain of Stuart house.

On leaving school Adam gained a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the Otago Polytechnic School of Fine Arts, and for a time, Adam was based in Dunedin.

His art explores surface and substrate over stunning large-scale canvases. His pieces envelop the viewer, opening a portal to a primordial, multilayered world. He sees painting as having the power to generate alchemical cultural transformations. His work draws primarily from explorations of dark and light, where points of light arise out of unfathomable darkness.

Adam’s abstract renderings of traditional forms exhibit subtle colours, contrast, and experimental use of media. Upon close inspection, remnants of obscured forms become apparent, revealing the artist’s hands as both creator and destroyer of surface and form.

For twenty years, he has examined the intersections of painting and social practice through New Zealand, Australia and Tonga. Motivated by themes related to the social context of nothingness and social justice, his solo and collaborative practice has presented as site-specific immersive environments, gallery installations, films and documentaries. His work has touched on diverse themes, including Māori mythology, appropriations of early colonial paintings, and interpretations of human physicality.

Adam now lives and works in Broome, Western Australia. Alongside his Interdisciplinary Arts Practice, for sixteen years he has facilitated and led arts, wellbeing and gendered programmes. He has written an illustrated novel and completing a participatory project with the Broome Community Recovery Centre in Western Australia and Tonga.