Adam Hugh Charles Reynolds, born in London on 22 October 1959, was a sculptor, curator, teacher, arts adviser and was active in the Disability Arts sector. He married Isabelle King in 1992, who he had met at Sussex University, and they had two children, Matilda in 1997 and Kit in 2000. Adam lived and worked in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire from 1990 until his death on 10 August 2005.
Adam and his brother Mark were diagnosed in early childhood with the muscle-wasting disease muscular dystrophy. Their parents, Peter and Anne Reynolds, were determined that they should attend mainstream schools and on advice from a naturopathic doctor (Dr. Gordon Latto), started them on an experimental strict vegetarian diet, which Adam always maintained was of great benefit to him.
Adam studied European History at Sussex University and later studied sculpture at the Sir John Cass School of Art. In 1984, with Isabelle, he opened the Adam Gallery in a former cobbler’s shop in Walcot Square, south London, which also served as their home and his studio. It ran a full programme of exhibitions until it closed in 1997.
Adam exhibited regularly at Adam Gallery throughout the 80s and 90s and had a number of larger public exhibitions including at Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield in 1990 and at Buckinghamshire County Museum and Art Gallery in 1996.
Adam worked with many different materials including stone, plaster, lead, copper, steel and glass. His work moved from predominantly figurative pieces in the 1980s, towards more abstract, geometric and larger scale work in the 1990s and beyond, like the public commissions for Scope's Midlands Office and for Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey.
A common thread throughout his work was his desire to "express apparent contradictions and to help others enjoy the contradictory nature of the universe". He did this most obviously, for example, in his lead series, which included a lead balloon and kite.
Adam said "I am clear that my greatest strengths stem from the fact of being born with muscular dystrophy, apparently my greatest weakness". He always favoured using scrap materials and found objects - picked up from the street or dug out of the ground - making his viewers reconsider the value and beauty of overlooked and rejected 'stuff'. He explained this tendency as being "founded on my lifelong experience of disability and the desire to challenge the commonplace assumption that this renders life all but useless and without value".
From 1987 worked as an access and disability consultant to organisations and exhibiting spaces such as the Tate Gallery, the Corporation of London, Camden Arts Centre and the National Museums of Scotland, and from 1990–7 was chairman and, until he died, a trustee of Shape, an innovative arts development agency working with disabled and other disadvantaged groups.
Adam was generous in his support for other artists, and Shape's Adam Reynolds Award, an annual bursary and residency award for mid-career disabled artists, is offered in the same spirit as that which guided the Adam Gallery.