Neo Mod: A survey of current work by international artist Dee Adams representing the exciting breadth of new abstraction presently illuminating the regional art scene. Works respond to influences omnipresent in the cultural and social milieu of Australia —computer technology, consumer consumption and nature’s abundance—referenced through multiple mediums.

Much of this new work is large, brash and tends toward a cool, urban aesthetic with a design-oriented edge. Its high-keyed, retinal style yet simple organization distinguish it from more familiar abstract modes.
The flat surfaces, painstakingly applied materials, and dynamic colors in these works present updated takes on centuries-old techniques, and in several instances, synthesize the newest in computer-generated design methods with venerated traditional practices.
A spirit of simplicity and strength pervades the cumulative results.

Dee Adams has a profound appreciation for mid-century design, its functional forms and textile patterns. The “mod” product often evoked, has definitely been an inspiration behind the use of her familiar organic designs. Inspiration for the biomorphic, fanciful shapes in her canvases often result from this passion for color and decorative form.

At the same time, Adams relies on her sense of design composition from the more computer based methods of a graphic designer.
She is also an award winning graphic artist, producing cutting edge designs for web sites, magazines, greeting cards, posters, and CD packages.
The rapid increase in the power and ease of computer-based design tools has opened up abstraction to new inquiries. While many artists have embraced digital as the sole basis for their art, creating digital-only projects, Adams combines the new with the old, altering and transforming computer-generated concepts and imagery into forms and patterns that are painted entirely by hand.

The tendency to exploit pattern and strong geometries seen in this exhibition also owes a debt to the 1970s Pattern and Decoration movement, which sought to break abstraction free from the strict formal rhetoric of Minimalism.
Present affinities have less to do with feminism, but have much to say about global cultural exchange in the digital age.
Adams creates elegant motifs with freely morphed and repeated forms. These works are evocative and often allude to nature as much as to pattern.
“It’s hard to find a form that resists reading,” says Adams about her work. "Simplifying an idea or concept down from its complicated form into an elegant line or colour is one of my ultimate obsessions."

Throughout 2005, Adams has exhibited extensively overseas including Washington D.C and San Francisco. Her art has appeared in “mainstream” media such as Domain Real Estate Magazine, dressing the sets of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's reality TV series "Project Greenlight Australia" and as well the hit Network Ten TV series "Australia's Next Top Model."

Major clients are located around the world in such cities as New York, San Francisco, New Orleans, Chicago, London, Rio de Janeiro and Sydney.