Adam Hill, painter and performer was born on the 11th March, 1970 at Blacktown in the western suburbs of Sydney. Hill studied Graphic Design at the University of Western Sydney, Nepean Campus and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1994.
While working as a graphic designer for the Indigenous Australians exhibition at the Australian Museum in 1997, Hill met the Wollongong-based artist Kevin Butler who became his main inspiration to begin painting. Hill took up painting in 1998 and describes his work, which uses acrylic house paint on canvas, as “vast colourful landscapes with reminders of colonial imposition “. Originally using house-paint because it was free, Hill now uses it as he enjoys its density, consistency, durability and affordability.
Hill’s work is informed by his research into historical records of Aboriginal resistance, ethnography and anthropology. In the June 2006 edition of Australian Art Collector writer Adam Geczy said of his work; “Hill’s commentary is laced with humorous bluster. An amalgam of poster art and hip-hop, Adam Hill’s painting still has no parallel in the Aboriginal art community. His works are typically acerbic attacks on abuses to the environment, and the continued reluctance of White communities to acknowledge the Aboriginal presence, past and present.”
An artist member of Boomalli Aboriginal Artist Cooperative since 1999, Hill has exhibited in solo and group shows intermittently with them since then. His work, Hand Christian and Her Son, was included in the 2003 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory and the work was selected to tour nationally as part of the award’s 20th anniversary exhibition that same year. He has had solo shows outside of Boomalli including “Whitewashed” at TAP Gallery, Darlinghurst in 2004, “The Outskirts of Town” at the Canberra Grammar School in 2004, “Hand Some Returns”, at Birrung Gallery (formerly Walkabout Gallery), Leichhardt in 2005 and “A sign of the crimes” in 2006 at Sydney’s Mori Gallery. Hill has also worked as a muralist for Redfern Community Centre and Ashfield Council.
Adam’s work is in the permanent collections of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) in Canberra, Blacktown City Council, Liverpool City Council, NSW Parliament House, Waterloo Library and Bangarra Dance Theatre. Adam has been awarded the Mayors Choice, 2003, the Liverpool Council Award, 2004 and the Maria Locke Award, 2006 at the annual Mil-Pra Art Prize organised by the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre. He won the Blacktown City Art Prize in 2002 and was a finalist in the 2005 and 2006 Parliament of NSW Indigenous Art Prize.
