Art Beyond Limits review: MND show pushes at the event horizon of existence

Gallery@Oxo, London
From the photographer paralysed from the neck down to the roboticist aiming to be the world’s first cyborg, this show for the Motor Neurone Disease Association is full of courage and passion

The power of photographer Simon Adams is to make you see the crystalline beauty of any given moment. A City crowd is moving in all directions, under two old-fashioned clocks in a panoramic black and white print that is radically focused so that while the background is all a blur, faces in the foreground are picked out in super-lucid detail. It’s a freeze-frame of the quotidian wonder that we take for granted – but Adams doesn’t. His pictures hold life with intense appreciation.

In 2012, Adams was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. He is paralysed from the neck down, dependent on carers who, in addition to their medical responsibilities, help set up his digital camera to shoot his big, wide-eyed images of the city and nature. An owl stares at you with hypnotic predatory intent; a purple sky broils over an aquamarine sea … these are photographs full of awe and passion, celebratory works of art that make you see afresh.

Art Beyond Limits is at Art@Oxo, London, until 6 October

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