︎FLOOD DRILL ︎ ADAM SHIELD ︎ 5 OCT - 30 NOV ︎
︎FLOOD DRILL ︎ ADAM SHIELD ︎ 5 OCT - 30 NOV ︎
FLOOD DRILL /
ADAM SHIELD
FLOOD DRILL /
ADAM SHIELD
ADAM SHIELD
5 OCT - 30 NOV
OPENING 4 OCT / 15:00
“He hands me a pair of binoculars and points out over the river at the gleaming glass tower on the other side of the water. In the top floor of the immaculate glass and steel building, I can see into a boardroom, a figure in a black suit watches over a long table covered in telecommunication equipment. He’s entangled in a network of cables, wires, and thin black magnetic tape fed through analogue recording machines…”
Flood Drill is an exhibition of new work by multidisciplinary artist Adam Shield. Shield’s practice is rooted in drawing and a DIY publishing ethos. His artistic output encompasses painting, murals, animation, publishing, and sound. He often presents these in expansive installations that explore interior worlds and narratives that draw on a range of popular and subcultural references, from film, music, and dreams to science fiction and comic books.
The act of drawing for Shield becomes a form of speculative fiction through which his personal encounter with the world and its intersection with the political is processed, in an attempt to fix a view from inside an ever-changing and multiplicitous city.
In Flood Drill*, Shield explores the possibilities of collage and expanded publishing to generate narrative and space. The resulting installation presents a filtered version of an area of South East London, close to the Thames Barrier in North Woolwich, where Shield has a studio.
Through drawing, field recording, and writing, Shield responds to the rapidly changing area as he encounters it. As capital and the slow violence of development advance along the Thames corridor, they swallow up industrial warehouses, garages, council estates, and civic infrastructure, and disappear communities.
As a response to these changing surroundings, Shield conjures a semi-fictional story featuring a surreal encounter with an outsider tour guide. This figure delivers prophetic warnings about a corporate property CEO who will use sonic emissions and electronic surveillance to nefarious ends.
This fantasy forms a loose narrative for a range of elements and materials to be read in relation to each other. Collages with drawn imagery record the texture of the area, whilst drawings of the buildings, people and patterns of its industrial past form a fever-dream cityscape.
Shield’s use of drawn collages and fragmented imagery is layered, with many of them refigured or re-repeated throughout. He playfully employs shifts in scale with an interlinked chain motif painted directly across the gallery walls. At either end of the gallery Shield has installed large-scale ‘baffle boards’ made from materials used for wrapping buildings under construction or demolition. Both the graphic mural and constructed baffles function as a display field for the hand-drawn and collaged elements. These are presented alongside filmed and animated vignettes, motifs, and scenes on large flat screen monitors.
This constellation of drawn and animated artworks is loosely connected further by a soundtrack of layered field recordings, performed instrumentation and spoken word. For Shield, the act of composing sound and music becomes a process by which one might ‘tune into’ the liminal edgelands of London, the city that constitutes the backdrop and subject matter of his enquiry.
*Flood Drill takes its title from a promotional video for the construction of the Thames Barrier. A structure conceived after the 1953 flooding of London, an event that also informed the design and construction of Thamesmead. The title conjures images of large-scale equipment or emergency actions to be undertaken by a community in the event of a deluge.
A daily screening of Peter Keiller’s seminal psychogeographic film London will play in the TACO! bookshop for the duration of the exhibition. Alongside a programme of events taking place provides different readings and interpretations of Flood Drill- further info below.
A walking tour of Thamesmead with architects Manalo & White and David Grandorge, including a gallery visit with Adam Shield.
A colour foraging workshop with Anna Huges and Ellie Pritchard.
A commissioned text by Samuel Fisher, with a pamphlet launch and evening of readings.
Who’s Listening to the City? a psychogeographic walking and risograph workshop with Adam Shield.
︎15 Nov
An evening of experimental music with Elliott Buchanan, Adam Shield, and others.
A Leftovers reading group responding to themes within Flood Drill.
Adam Shield (1988) is an artist from Newcastle upon Tyne who lives and works in London. He has exhibited nationally, including at the Drawing Room, the Showroom (London), the Priestman Gallery, Baltic 39, Belmacz, Royal Academy of Arts, and Glasgow International. He co-runs Long Distance Press with Thomas Whittle. Their public artwork Hand Over Hand in Paddington Square opened in July 2025.
Flood Drill is an exhibition of new work by multidisciplinary artist Adam Shield. Shield’s practice is rooted in drawing and a DIY publishing ethos. His artistic output encompasses painting, murals, animation, publishing, and sound. He often presents these in expansive installations that explore interior worlds and narratives that draw on a range of popular and subcultural references, from film, music, and dreams to science fiction and comic books.
The act of drawing for Shield becomes a form of speculative fiction through which his personal encounter with the world and its intersection with the political is processed, in an attempt to fix a view from inside an ever-changing and multiplicitous city.
In Flood Drill*, Shield explores the possibilities of collage and expanded publishing to generate narrative and space. The resulting installation presents a filtered version of an area of South East London, close to the Thames Barrier in North Woolwich, where Shield has a studio.
Through drawing, field recording, and writing, Shield responds to the rapidly changing area as he encounters it. As capital and the slow violence of development advance along the Thames corridor, they swallow up industrial warehouses, garages, council estates, and civic infrastructure, and disappear communities.
As a response to these changing surroundings, Shield conjures a semi-fictional story featuring a surreal encounter with an outsider tour guide. This figure delivers prophetic warnings about a corporate property CEO who will use sonic emissions and electronic surveillance to nefarious ends.
This fantasy forms a loose narrative for a range of elements and materials to be read in relation to each other. Collages with drawn imagery record the texture of the area, whilst drawings of the buildings, people and patterns of its industrial past form a fever-dream cityscape.
Shield’s use of drawn collages and fragmented imagery is layered, with many of them refigured or re-repeated throughout. He playfully employs shifts in scale with an interlinked chain motif painted directly across the gallery walls. At either end of the gallery Shield has installed large-scale ‘baffle boards’ made from materials used for wrapping buildings under construction or demolition. Both the graphic mural and constructed baffles function as a display field for the hand-drawn and collaged elements. These are presented alongside filmed and animated vignettes, motifs, and scenes on large flat screen monitors.
This constellation of drawn and animated artworks is loosely connected further by a soundtrack of layered field recordings, performed instrumentation and spoken word. For Shield, the act of composing sound and music becomes a process by which one might ‘tune into’ the liminal edgelands of London, the city that constitutes the backdrop and subject matter of his enquiry.
§
*Flood Drill takes its title from a promotional video for the construction of the Thames Barrier. A structure conceived after the 1953 flooding of London, an event that also informed the design and construction of Thamesmead. The title conjures images of large-scale equipment or emergency actions to be undertaken by a community in the event of a deluge.
§
A daily screening of Peter Keiller’s seminal psychogeographic film London will play in the TACO! bookshop for the duration of the exhibition. Alongside a programme of events taking place provides different readings and interpretations of Flood Drill- further info below.
︎21 SEPT
A walking tour of Thamesmead with architects Manalo & White and David Grandorge, including a gallery visit with Adam Shield.
︎11 Oct
A colour foraging workshop with Anna Huges and Ellie Pritchard.
︎16 Oct
A commissioned text by Samuel Fisher, with a pamphlet launch and evening of readings.
︎1 Nov
Who’s Listening to the City? a psychogeographic walking and risograph workshop with Adam Shield.
︎15 Nov
An evening of experimental music with Elliott Buchanan, Adam Shield, and others.
︎30 Nov
A Leftovers reading group responding to themes within Flood Drill.
§
Adam Shield (1988) is an artist from Newcastle upon Tyne who lives and works in London. He has exhibited nationally, including at the Drawing Room, the Showroom (London), the Priestman Gallery, Baltic 39, Belmacz, Royal Academy of Arts, and Glasgow International. He co-runs Long Distance Press with Thomas Whittle. Their public artwork Hand Over Hand in Paddington Square opened in July 2025.