Description
Artwork info
“A copycat version of 1987’s famous ‘L’Enfant’ (also known as ‘Man and Baby’) poster published by Athena. The original poster sold over 5 million copies, and was the biggest selling poster in British history, gracing the walls of millions of teenage girls’ bedrooms in the UK and around the world. The image was meant to signify a sensitive ‘New Man’ – empathetic, sensitive – a man capable of embracing his softer side and challenging
traditional gender stereotypes.
This version sits in a long empty bedroom, abandoned when its owner left at 15 for school in New Zealand, before the sexual abuse trials that would ensconce her family. The stands like a devotional panel; a hope for an alternative future that had to be sought elsewhere.
It sits, ominously, at the end of the bed. A sinister hint of what was to come or a eulogy to what was lost.” – 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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