Freelance Creative - Cultural Development Practitioner - Consultant - Community Animator – Culture Maker
ADAM LEWCZUK
Adam Lewczuk’s practice centres around the notion of past experience and place. His work evokes a sense of nostalgic familiarity, while challenging the audience to identify the exact origin of the connection as the work is rarely derived from any one tangible subject. Lewczuk’s work explores the interrelationship between personally inspired nostalgia and the viewer role in creating a sense of place. This is achieved by recontextualising redundant and expired objects, discarded machines and antiquated methods. Often utliising motifs, characters or past events that are engineered to highlight that the value of the vista is only qualified by the existence of the viewer, the individual is challenged to explore their understanding of place in the context of past experiences and sense of self.
Lewczuk’s practise serves to remind the viewer of a past often devalued and the need for a recalibration of attention placing an urgency on a basic right for access to ‘place’. His approach also points out that contemporary multimedia art can occur without high-tech machinery in what can only be described as a digital dichotomy. This theme is consistently demonstrated via the application of discarded technologies and antiquated machines such as slide, overhead and analogue projectors, cathode ray tube televisions, VHS, tape and record players, typewriters, kaleidoscopes, and view masters to produce elaborate post digitalist audio visual works that are fused amongst a mass of hand cut stencils, zines, large scale paste-ups and stickers.
Lewczuk is particularly interested in delivering events and installing work in non-traditional venues and spaces that typically are uninviting in nature such as multi-deck car parks, water towers, industrial estates, alleyways and suburban wastelands. This exploration of non-traditional spaces and reappropriation through creative practice also extends to collaboration and interdisciplinary experimentation resulting in greater accessibility of Lewczuk’s work to the viewer.
Lewczuk’s practise serves to remind the viewer of a past often devalued and the need for a recalibration of attention placing an urgency on a basic right for access to ‘place’. His approach also points out that contemporary multimedia art can occur without high-tech machinery in what can only be described as a digital dichotomy. This theme is consistently demonstrated via the application of discarded technologies and antiquated machines such as slide, overhead and analogue projectors, cathode ray tube televisions, VHS, tape and record players, typewriters, kaleidoscopes, and view masters to produce elaborate post digitalist audio visual works that are fused amongst a mass of hand cut stencils, zines, large scale paste-ups and stickers.
Lewczuk is particularly interested in delivering events and installing work in non-traditional venues and spaces that typically are uninviting in nature such as multi-deck car parks, water towers, industrial estates, alleyways and suburban wastelands. This exploration of non-traditional spaces and reappropriation through creative practice also extends to collaboration and interdisciplinary experimentation resulting in greater accessibility of Lewczuk’s work to the viewer.
Professional and Creative Practice Framework
“I understand the importance of providing vibrant, diverse and culturally appropriate planning, programs and spaces, whilst also acknowledging our past influences and experiences. This is key in building empowered, resilient and culturally active communities.
I believe and practice in supporting the communities’ creative needs by providing developmental support, opportunities through action-based learning and encouraging creative risk taking using arts and culture as a mouth piece for advocacy. I have seen first-hand how this approach impacts directly on the positive wellbeing of individuals and communities and enhances innovative creative practice.
I believe and practice in supporting the communities’ creative needs by providing developmental support, opportunities through action-based learning and encouraging creative risk taking using arts and culture as a mouth piece for advocacy. I have seen first-hand how this approach impacts directly on the positive wellbeing of individuals and communities and enhances innovative creative practice.
My personal creative process is informed by the above approach, but also by the fact that during my formative years I lived on a diet of smarty’s, vegemite/cheese sandwiches, Hawaiian pizza and between the ages of 3 to 8 religiously watched Elvis movies, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Mad Max 2 and The Empire Strikes Back (almost daily) and my first ever record was Dynasty by KISS on vinyl.
These experiences have manifested throughout my creative practice, evident in my stencil, projection and multimedia work with the themes of rock n roll, cross dressing, post-apocalyptic, science fiction, Polynesian pop culture jamming and exploring our sense of self and place in the context of ours past experiences and values in a modern throwaway society”
These experiences have manifested throughout my creative practice, evident in my stencil, projection and multimedia work with the themes of rock n roll, cross dressing, post-apocalyptic, science fiction, Polynesian pop culture jamming and exploring our sense of self and place in the context of ours past experiences and values in a modern throwaway society”