Adam Norton

About the work

Giant Badges is an ongoing series of large round colourful text works taking the exact form of old school lapel badges but enlarged to over a metre in size. The colourful designs of the badges draw from my nostalgia for the pop music, science fiction and political activism of my youth. However, since their initial conception in 2020, the recent works in the series have also responded to the emergencies we are living through. In this expanded iteration, eight new badges have been added reflecting and updating recent themes, and appropriately for Canberra, touching on some politically charged subject matter.

Eight of these works were originally commissioned by the City of Sydney. Project production: GREYSPACE.

Photo credit Anique Weve

About the artist

Adam Norton completed a BFA at The Ruskin College of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University and emigrated to Australia in 2002. He has participated in exhibitions in Australia, Korea, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and the United States. In 2019 he was included in Moon Landing – The Giant Leap, Casula Powerhouse; Space, Gippsland Art Gallery, VIC; and Cementa19, Kandos, NSW. He was included in Black Mist, Burnt Country, which toured nationally 2016-2019; Beyond Belief: the Sublime in Contemporary Art, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (2017); and Daejeon Biennale 2016: COSMOS – The Future and Beyond, Daejeon Museum of Art, South Korea. Norton’s work is held in the collections of Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre, Wollongong Art Gallery, University of Technology Sydney, Broken Hill Regional Gallery, Griffith University Art Gallery and Artbank. His most recent public art commission is for Belmore Station as part of Sydney Metro upgrade.