The Signs Are Good: 20 years of painting the future

From the Atomic Age to UFOlogy, and to our own dreams and expectations of the Space Age, Adam Norton reflects on versions of the future and how they have changed over time.

His paintings fix on aspects we might have missed. He has visited Maralinga and Woomera in the South Australian desert, where the British government conducted their nuclear and rocket tests in the post-war era. He has visited some of the world’s UFO hot spots like Roswell and Area 51 in the USA. He has made special pilgrimages to where outer space collided with our planet at the two largest meteor craters in the world, in Arizona and Wolfe Creek in Western Australia. 

Norton is part-anthropologist and part-futurologist as he remakes visions of the future into large colourful acrylic paintings. The works are influenced by the book covers, film posters and scientific billboards of the sci-fi and Space Age era he has lived through. The Signs Are Good is a canny retelling of our shared fantasy of the future.

First presented at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery.