Description
Artwork info
“These spindly trees occupy the far corner of Adamstown. Their fronds hang like long fingers, layered into a tangled web. I would pass them on the way to Pulau school, or to Down Flatcher. A shaded nook with a mystical quality. In the past children would swing from its tendrils, emulating Tarzan.
Today, they hang silent. Inanimate. In the 70s, Steve Christian raped a twelve year old girl amidst the Banyan trees. The girl in question had been walking with other friends, when Steve and a gang of boys, grabbed her and forced her to the floor. They removed her shorts, and Steve raped her, while the others held her arms and legs. When he was finished, he encouraged the others to ‘have a go’ – a familiar pattern, one repeated by his sons two decades later.
I had seen Steve speed around the corner at Jack Williams Valley. It had become a storage area for heavy machinery, some of which Steve was the only person licensed to drive.
I wondered if he considered the significance of the place. Whether the vehicles were parked there in protest – a suggestion that despite his convictions and the remnants of his crimes, he was still ‘top dog’.” – Rhiannon Adam
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CONTACT | tom@opendoors.gallery
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Big Fence / Pitcairn Island
The Pitcairn Islands are the last British Overseas Territory in the South Pacific. Pitcairn was permanently settled by the infamous Bounty mutineers and their Polynesian captives in 1790, and their descendents, now numbering fewer than 40, still live there today.
The tiny, isolated, volcanic island measures just two by one miles, is 400 nautical miles away from its nearest neighbour, and is the least populated jurisdiction in the world. Due to the infrequent supply ship schedule (the island’s only direct access), Rhiannon Adam was trapped on Pitcairn for three months, spending two of those living at Big Fence… READ MORE
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Artist Bio
Rhiannon Adam is a photographic artist, born in Cork, Ireland, in 1985. She currently lives and works between London and the US.
In 1992, her parents sold everything they owned and bought a live-aboard sailing boat, Jannes. From that point, her childhood became nomadic, moving from place to place, mainly around South America and the Caribbean. She eventually moved to London as a teenager to live her with aunt, enabling her to begin mainstream education. She later studied at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and at the University of Cambridge.
Adam’s work is centred on research-based, long-form, social documentary projects that make use of analogue photographic processes and archive materials, as well as her on-going obsession with Polaroid and the materiality of the photographic image. Her early life experiences have had a lasting influence on her work, with a focus on remote communities, the concept of utopia, and the fine line between fact and fiction… READ MORE
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