Adrian Ward
Adrian Ward
Adrian Ward
Artist;
Story
Contemporary Sculptor.
Adrian Ward is a Melbourne based artist renowned for his thought-provoking sculptures, especially his works in silver bullion.
Adrian was accepted into Melbourne University Victorian College of the Arts, to study a Degree in Fine Art majoring in sculpture in 1995. His artworks have been acquired by private and corporate collectors.
He was recognized early by the Dean of Fine Arts, Noel Hutchison, who wrote in a letter of recommendation: “His ideas are unique in this institution at this time… with a perfected technique there are no limits to what he can achieve.”
​
At 23, in the final months of his study, Adrian’s father took his own life. The sudden loss revealed a double existence behind his father’s public face, and the emotional and practical fallout reshaped everything Adrian believed about his future. “I decided to leave the neon-clad door of society and material aspiration,” he says, “to find something else—something real.”
​
Adrian, his brother, and a close friend, Nick, left Melbourne on road bikes, heading north with no map beyond instinct and will. “We were ready to face adventure or our own deaths,” he recalls.
After months on the road, they found themselves deep in the subtropical jungle of Far North NSW. There, they built a hut in the forest and lived in isolation while Adrian completed his thesis on chaos theory and art—finishing his degree from the most remote classroom imaginable.
“The entire journey became research for my thesis,” Adrian explains, “but also a young man’s initiation. That type of initiation has become almost extinct in the modern world. We were immersed in nature, physically and physiologically. Living in the jungle gave us a vantage point—seeing modern civilisation from the outside looking in.”
​
Over time, the brothers adapted so completely to the environment that the forest felt like a second skin. “At one point,” Adrian recalls, “I saw all of human thought—everything we have ever understood—represented as a single thin line floating in the 365-degree reality of nature.”
By then, a full year had passed in the remote hut. The experience reshaped him, grounding his artistic direction and the worldview that would drive the decades of work to come.
“One day, while sitting in the hut with my brother having a cup of tea, we heard a sound unlike anything we’d ever encountered. It was as if a thousand birds were rushing toward us.
Instinctively, we left our tea and shot off into the bush to investigate. By that stage we moved through the forest without bending a twig—like animals that had grown into the landscape.
​
We reached the state walking track and saw the strangest sight: the ground was covered in patterns that looked like a giant centipede had passed through, a thousand tiny slippery feet marking the dirt. Then the source appeared—a long line of schoolchildren on a day trip, a teacher at the front and another at the rear, herding them along the path.
​
In that moment, I understood just how far I had drifted from society—and how far society itself had drifted from the natural world. The divide struck me with a mix of fear and despair.
“I began using the most expensive commodity in the world—silver and gold bullion—as an art medium. I felt it allowed me to connect the value of the physical world to the world of economics in a direct, intimate way,” Adrian explains. “When I returned to Melbourne from the subtropical forest, it was obvious that money had become almost entirely abstract after the global financial meltdown. A cup of coffee at $3.20 has a tangible, comprehensible value. But a trillion-dollar bank bailout exists beyond anyone’s ability to grasp real monetary meaning.”
​
Ironically, Adrian had already begun work on The Silver Dollar a week before the financial collapse. “The American dollar was the greatest symbol of power at the time,” he says, “but it suddenly looked as though that era might be ending. China’s manufacturing machine was transforming the planet’s raw resources into a new economic landscape.
With the Silver Dollar, I was literally making money from money—using bullion to search for a way back to real, grounded value.”
​
This exploration of bullion became the foundation of a deeper inquiry into how humanity is reshaping the planet through its hunger for resources. Adrian uses the term “commodernity” to describe this phenomenon. “Commodernity is the price of our drive for commodities,” he says.
“It’s the world being reorganized into a human-centric value system of supply and demand. In a sense, it’s the Futurist dream realized—a world arranged into its mechanical, consumable parts.”
“Humankind demands consistency, and that demand reduces the natural world to a simplified, linear reality—a reality designed to maximise human survival,” Adrian explains. “The danger is that people now require fungible resources, while nature depends on diversity, not uniformity. Our pursuit of comfort increases our chances of survival but decreases the survival of many other living things.”
​
He continues: “We’ve evolved a way of thinking that compartmentalises the world. This is not how nature works—but it is how human cognition works. Because of this, the modern experience of the natural world has been decoupled from the natural order, in the same way money became detached from real value. We now comprehend nature mostly through commodities: an egg, a prawn, a cut of meat—objects completely removed from their ecological context.”
​
“By creating these ordinary, inexpensive objects in gold and silver,” Adrian says, “I’m exposing our perception of value. Once transformed into bullion, they become objects that resist both monetary and environmental decay. They transcend the rise and fall of markets, and even the passing of civilisations.”
Time passed in the jungle. Friend Nick left, others came and went, and eventually Adrian’s brother also returned home. Adrian stayed behind. He purchased a small piece of land on the edge of the rainforest. “I spent most of my time in the tropical forest observing and creating art,” he says.
​
In 2001, Adrian began working as a gallery assistant at the Lismore Regional Gallery under the notorious director Irene Hatfield, who had been acquitted the previous year of shooting her husband, Christopher, at their Maroubra home in 1985. It was a position that placed Adrian at the centre of a vibrant, unconventional regional art world.
​
During this period, he exhibited extensively across the Northern Rivers region—including the Lismore Regional Gallery, Byron Fine Art Gallery, Blue Knob Gallery, and other venues. He went on to win the People’s Choice Award at the Northern Rivers Spring Arts Festival for three consecutive years.
​
Living in such close relationship with nature, Adrian made work using the materials around him—wood, clay, and found organic forms. But when he eventually returned to Melbourne, a new artistic impulse emerged: bullion.
“The divided realities of nature and economics represent a conversation between all that exists and the limits of human thought,” Adrian reflects. “I try to create objects that stand outside human value systems—objects that step beyond thought itself. That is the true path to prosperity.”
Adrian soon began casting silver and gold bullion in increasingly large quantities for his sculptures. In doing so, he encountered the inherent difficulty of fine silver: it is a rare metal never intended for large-scale casting. To work with it, Adrian had to invent his own methods. “I was moving between two disciplines—sculpture and jewellery—which created serious technical challenges,” he says. “But once those problems were solved, the results were spectacular.”
As his techniques evolved, clients began commissioning Adrian to transform their own precious metal holdings into artworks. What emerged was a unique and intimate form of sculpture—one that fused material wealth with artistic expression.
“My ambition,” Adrian says, “is to cast the world’s largest silver sculpture—and I now have the ability to do so.”
CV.
Adrian Ward
Born Melbourne, Victoria, 1972.
​​ABN. 92744381523
Mobile: 0429891707
Email: adrianartward@hotmail.com
Education & Training
1990 Art and Design Certificate Box Hill Tafe.
1994 B.A. Fine Art Sculpture. The University of Melbourne. Victorian College of the Arts.
2016-19 Options Market Trading Trainee. MCKEOWN MARRS PTY LTD. AFSL. 403 562.
Commissions / Residencies
​
​​
2025 F-40 Farrari Silver 100kg fine silver. Ongoing
​
2024 Exhibited Pure Silver Batman Cowl — New York Comic Con
2024 Visited Jeff Koons Studio, New York — Professional discussions with head technician
​
2024 Agoro New Zealand Mint. premium silver coins and rare collectibles. Collaboration projects ongoing.
​
2023 Rachel AI — Private Commission
​
2022–23 Airbnb Superhost — Van Gogh “Artist Bedroom”, Heidelberg West
​
​2021–23 Retail Installation Artist — Finch & Lane (Ashburton, VIC)
2021: Alpine train-set scene with Swedish snow village, mountain ranges, and illuminated cave tunnel
2022: English fairground with ancient Roman ruins
2023: Two-storey Tudor house with Santa’s grotto
​
2021 Marble Polishing — Wellington Parade
​
2020 Present Assistant Stonemason — Taylor Stone Stonemasons
​
2020 Featured in Artist Documentary — filmed late February at start of COVID
2020 Private commission. "Pandemic" Sculptural Work
​
2019–25 Fundere Sculpture Foundry — Sunshine
​
2019–20 Private Commission: Thinking Man limited Series of 13 (14 kg works), first commission Dec 2019​​
​
2019 Sacred Heart Primary School Oakleigh. Artist in Residents. Art Installation. See Here
​
2018 Scotch College. Art Installation, Professional Development Course. See Here
2018 Kilvington Grammar. Self Portrait Class, Art Installation, Professional Development Course. See Here
​
2017 Eastwood Primary School. Fabric of Memory Classes. See Here
2017-19 Zart art Professional Development Course. See Here
2017 Big Group Corporation. Art moulds. See Here
2016-17 Karoo Primary School. Fabric of Memory Sculpture Course, Self Portrait Classes. See Here
2016 Roberts Mc Cubbin Primary School WW1 Boots on the Ground. Bronze Sculpture. See Here
2015-16 Silver Casting. Goldstackers. See Here
2015 Black Type Snake Karoo PS. See Here
​