Causal Thread – Adam Boyd

The content Boyd is drawn to tends to embrace the fugitive, immaterial or ethereal. He employs diverse craft-based channels in order to materialise these fleeting observations. Boyd often documents phenomena refracted by the urban environment, permeating the domestic. 

His research orbits pop cultural and art historical content which – in turn – harbour traces of much wider philosophical and scientific debate. A fascination with the tropes of science-fiction has become an internal filter for the quasi-ecclesiastic, supernatural imagery he favours. Boyd aims to situate his practice as a syncretic testbed where ideas and processes coexist and cross-pollinate.

Causal Thread takes its title from a deterministic view of time; a chain in which all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Boyd’s patchwork-like configurations offer up numerous transcriptions of the same event (refracted light). Through his use of photography, lidar technology and traditional textile processes, these works attempt to disrupt a linear notion of time, both pictorially and materially. For Boyd, the line of stitch allows a collision of multiple worlds.

The private viewing of Causal Thread is on Wednesday 20 July, 6pm-8pm.

Adam Boyd (b. 1993, Newcastle-under-Lyme) has recently completed an MFA at The Slade School of Fine Art, London and holds a Bachelor’s from Glasgow School of Art (2016). During his studies he was selected for the Euan Uglow Scholarship and the George & Cordelia Oliver Scholarship. Before commencing his studies at The Slade, Boyd generated two solo exhibitions for venues in Glasgow, Solaristics (2018) & Synthespians (2019). In 2021, Strand Systems, Boyd’s first solo showing outside of the UK, opened in Hafnarfjordur, Iceland. The show represented the culmination of Boyd’s month-long residency at SÍM, Reykjavík in August 2021. Individual works have been exhibited in several group exhibitions in the UK and abroad (Tokyo, Hokkaido, New York, Reykjavik). Adam was recently selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2022.

Twitter/Instagram: @adamb0yd