Art Central Hong Kong

Born in Gisborne, New Zealand, in 1959, Peter Adsett has lived and worked in Australia since 1982, developing his painting practice. He exhibits regularly in both countries, and has shown in the United States, in New York and Boston. 

His academic background includes an MFA from the Northern Territory University, and a PhD from Australian National University. In 2001 he was awarded a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and enjoyed residencies in the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York, and the McDowell Colony in New Hampshire.  Adsett’s work is held in institutions and museums in Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

Adsett has devoted twenty years now to an investigation of abstraction, finding it to be an enterprise of great, untapped potential.  One should view Adsett’s art as a critique of abstract painting from the early 20th century to today, a task that became further complicated when he confronted the art of indigenous Australians - what many believe is the most powerful painting produced today.

In 2000 he completed a series of large-scale acrylic paintings in collaboration with the Gija artist, Rusty Peters (from Turkey Crossing, Western Australia).  The resulting exhibition of fourteen works, titled Two Laws, One Big Spirit, travelled around Australia and New Zealand and will be shown again Newcastle, NSW, in 2016.

In 2009, Adsett built a house and studio in southern Victoria that was the fruit of another collaboration, this time with a New Zealand architect, Sam Kebbell.  The innovative and much admired building (now housing Adsett and his family) is regarded as a “dialogue between painting and architecture.” 

This was the direction explored in the works for the 2014 Melbourne Art Fair and the 2015 Sydney Contemporary Art Fair.  Whilst he would maintain that his paintings always “take on the wall”, Adsett’s recent work engaged with this proposition explicitly, to the point of referencing the erased and scarred wall left after paintings have been removed.  In all Adsett’s work, the viewer will discover a degree of wit and humour coming to the fore with zest, together with a serious engagement with the history of abstraction. 

Currently, the artist is preparing a series of paintings for Art Central Hong Kong 2016.  This work will relate closely to a nearby freestanding wall titled ‘Paintings Back’ that the artist was commissioned to paint by the Art Fair organisers.