Ron Adams: Statement

Adams’ work invites an awareness of the way in which perceptions of how ‘signs’ operate. You might call his artworks ‘meaning composites’. Understanding that emotion and thoughts are complex and abstracted things, and not able to be adequately pictured, Adams presents compositions that contain multiple elements and symbols. Much as semaphore or pictograms are systems for expressing particular concepts, Adams relies on the process whereby a thing can be spoken, written or suggested, and the recipient (us) thinks of a corresponding meaning. This process, in linguistic terminology, is called concretisation or actualisation. His use of graphics, colour, forms and texts are units which function as the building blocks to meaning, as are poems for example, made up from the organisation of single words.