Ada Bond
"My practice finds its origin in a warped sense of girlish sentimentality: my works speak of a youthful optimism that has been forever changed by the cruel realities of adulthood". - Ada Bond
An obsessive collector of moments, memories and images sourced from dark crevices of the internet, Ada creates intrinsically cryptic pieces designed to keep more secrets than they divulge. She commonly finds herself tracing unique patterns between images initially found impulsively - a photo of a discarded, wrinkled-up valentine's balloon sparks a yarn that she unintentionally spins into an all-consuming web.
Her works often feature disembodied figures or animals on stark, almost velvet, black backgrounds; their subjects stare out of the darkness, trapping the unsuspecting viewer in a nightmarish exchange. When taken together, her paintings form a relational archaeology that is hard to trace - lacking a specific attempt at meaning, they gesture at the grit and debris of human experience.
Rather than the devil being in the detail, her paintings are devilish in their meticulous attention to minute detail - they unsettle the viewer through a decided use of hyper-realism that reaches into the territory of the uncanny. The viewer is left perplexed, even alarmed, wondering how many hours it took her to create such a rendering of a hairless cat, and more importantly, why she made it in the first place?
Ada Bond (b.2002) is a London-based artist. She completed a UAL Level 3 Foundation Diploma in Art and Design at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2021, and is currently studying BA in Fine Art: Painting at The Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. Recent selected exhibitions include: Winter Show, (Asylum Studios, Suffolk, 2022), Era Journal, (Crypt Gallery, London, 2022) and Good Grief, (The Old Butchers, London, 2022).
