Print Painting
The artist’s gel painting practice operates within a materially driven framework informed by theories of entropy, ruination, and post-anthropocentric materialism. Situated between abstraction and site-responsive observation, the work emerges from sustained engagement with the urban and non-urban environments encountered in places where the artist resides and those accessed through travel. Within these shifting contexts, surfaces function as repositories of temporal, social, and environmental inscription. Layering and mark-making are deployed as iterative, accumulative gestures that parallel processes of accretion, erosion, and stratification, foregrounding time as an active material condition rather than a representational theme.
This conceptual and methodological orientation originates in a formative encounter with urban decay in 1978, when, at the age of seven, the artist observed a billboard subjected to prolonged environmental exposure. The slow degradation of that surface - its peeling layers, faded imagery, and structural fragmentation - functioned as an early experiential model of material transformation beyond the artist’s control. Since then, ruins, the discarded, the weathered, and the aged have operated not as aesthetic motifs but as critical frameworks through which the work interrogates time, authorship, and the limits of intentionality within contemporary art practice.
Painting
Glimpses investigates landscape through the temporal and perceptual experience of movement. The works emerge from journeys - by bicycle, train, or car - where the artist records the shifting landscape through drawing, photography, and video. Rather than capturing a fixed viewpoint, each image responds to fleeting views, fragments, and moments encountered en route, emphasizing duration, transience, and the act of observation itself.
The practice positions the landscape as a layered surface, shaped by time, movement, and perspective. Paintings and works on paper are not literal representations of place, but accumulations of impressions, glimpses, and temporal traces. While the artist occasionally produces paintings of specific views, the majority of the work functions as a responsive meditation on place, assembling experience and observation into a fluid visual record. In this way, Glimpses foregrounds process, perception, and the interplay between movement, memory, and landscape as active agents in the making of the work.
Sculpture
The artist’s sculptural practice extends drawing into three-dimensional form, situating sculpture as artefact, ruin, and excavated trace. Informed by the movement of time, archaeology and archival methodologies, the work treats form as evidence of lived experiences, historical realities, and moments that might become forgotten, disregarded, or deliberately obscured. Each sculpture functions as a fragment rather than a complete narrative, inviting readings shaped by speculation.
Material choice and process operate through assembly, erosion, and reconfiguration, exposing the instability of form and vulnerability over time. Some of the works resist permanence, instead aligning with the logic of the ruin: incomplete, contingent, and open to reinterpretation.
Positioned between recovery and decay, the artefact sculptures acknowledge the inevitability of disintegration and historical erasure.
Wire sculpture, 2025.
Wire sculpture, 2025.
Woodcut, linocut on plaster Fused plaster 2025
Plaster and embedded wire removed 2025
Handmade paper (Shredded documents) Black and white wire, Zinc etching, Red thread 2024
Found object 2023
Found object 2023
Trinity Centre, Bristol Fibreglass globe sculpture, 2022.
College Green, Bristol Fibreglass globe sculpture, 2022.
Pewter sculpt, 2019.
Portraiture
Adam Grose’s portrait practice investigates the forms and functions of representation within the historical record of the human species. Through portraiture, he interrogates what it means to be seen, shifting the gaze away from conventional modes of image-making to confront the viewer directly. The works enable the sitter to assert presence and agency, challenging traditional hierarchies of visibility and giving voice to those historically marginalised, obscured, or erased.
These portraits operate as relational and performative sites, enacting and activating the thoughts, memories, and responses of the viewer. Rather than presenting a projected or imagined identity, the works foreground the agency of the sitter, positioning them as co-authors in the act of representation. In this way, the practice emphasizes recognition, accountability, and historical consciousness, seeking to ensure that those who have been ignored or forgotten are acknowledged and remembered within contemporary society.
Pigment Painting & Prints
These works emerge directly from the landscape that formed it, collapsing the distance between subject, material, and process. By using pigments sourced from the landscape and from rocks, using water gathered from surrounding environments, these pieces become less a depiction of place and more a physical extension of it.
The granular textures and organic dispersions across the surface evoke processes of erosion, sedimentation, and mineral transformation—slow, patient forces that shape terrain over time.
Rather than imposing imagery onto a neutral surface, Grose allows the inherent properties of his materials to guide the composition.
The water carries and disperses pigment unpredictably, mirroring natural flows, while the earth-derived colors retain a tactile, almost geological presence. This interplay results in a work that feels both deliberate and contingent, balancing artistic intention with the agency of the materials themselves.
The artwork invites viewers to consider not just how landscapes look, but how they exist and evolve. It foregrounds the idea that the land is not merely observed but actively participates in its own representation. In doing so, Grose’s practice challenges conventional boundaries between art and environment, suggesting a more reciprocal relationship—one where creation is an act of collaboration with the natural world rather than a depiction of it.
Commission: The World Reimagined
Legacy : Artist Statement
Legacy explores the untold stories of individuals long overlooked or erased from historical records. These forgotten figures—working poor, dispossessed, enslaved, and indentured - were integral to the construction of society, yet their contributions have been systematically overshadowed by those in positions of power. The dominant narratives of history have largely celebrated rulers and elites, leaving the vast majority of humanity absent from the collective memory.
Through engagement with hidden and suppressed archives, the works illuminate lives obscured by erasure and historical whitewashing. They investigate the lived experiences of people whose labour, resilience, and suffering underpinned the economic and social structures of their time, including the transatlantic slave trade, which shaped the foundations of modern markets and societies. By foregrounding these narratives, the works challenge conventional history and asserts the significance of the marginalised in shaping history.
The practice functions as an act of remembrance. By excavating obscured histories, the artist seeks to confront the legacies of injustice that continue to reverberate in contemporary post-colonial societies. These sculptures and installations serve as provisional markers of memory, acknowledging absence while resisting the myth of historical completeness. In doing so, Lost Generations questions the authority of dominant narratives, exposes structural inequalities, and invites a more inclusive understanding of the past.
Ultimately, the work compels reflection on the connections between past and present, urging viewers to consider how histories of marginalisation and oppression continue to shape contemporary life. By giving voice to the silenced, Lost Generations foregrounds the collective labour, sacrifice, and endurance that have been foundational to society, fostering a critical engagement with memory, history, and ultimately seeking justice and reparation.
LEGACY
Echoes in the Present
Acrylic Paint on Fibreglass Globe
June 2022
© The World Reimagined & Adam Grose
Public sculpture on permanant display at GWR Parkway Station, Bristol, 2023.
