Adams tells stories that analyze the significance and contrivance of story-telling, ultimately crafting a meta-discourse on the semiotics of narrative. Often shot on 16mm film, his deftly-edited collages merge autobiographical and popular sources, recasting everyday anecdotes, jokes and memories within the context of appropriated television and movie images, advertising, and pop references. Works such as Sensible Shoes (1983) and Intellectual Properties (1985) deconstruct mass media and personal narratives to investigate the collision of fact and fiction in everyday life, love, art and representation. Image, sound and text are reassembled in inventive inquiries into the collapse of the imaginary and the real. With wit and style, Adams illustrates the relation between the construction of personal identity and the internalization of the tropes of popular fiction.
Adams was born in England in 1953. He received a B.A. from the Newcastle Polytechnic Fine Arts Institute in Newcastle, England. A member of the Basement Group, a Newcastle-based exhibition and production venue for performance, video, and film, from 1979 to 1984, he has received awards from the Arts Council of Great Britain, Northern Arts, and the Massachusetts State Council on the Arts and Humanities. Adams has taught at institutions including Newcastle Polytechnic and Sheffield Polytechnic in England; the Museum School of Fine Art, Boston; and the Chicago Art Institute. His videotapes have been exhibited throughout the world, at institutions and festivals including the Berlin Film Festival; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Sebastian International Film Festival, Spain; Bonn Videonale, West Germany; Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany; Institute of Contemporary Art, London; and The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Adams lives in Newcastle, England.