Titled A Way from Heaven, Adam’s artwork at Barn Elms is based upon the area’s connection to Sir Francis Walsingham – the government administrator responsible for intelligence services in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I – who resided at Barn Elms Manor. It was Walsingham’s spy system that discovered the Babington Plot of 1586 to murder Queen Elizabeth I and her ministers and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots. Babington’s encrypted correspondence with Mary was intercepted and decoded by Walsingham’s spies, preventing the plot from being carried out and ultimately leading to the execution of the Queen of Scots.

For A Way from Heaven, Adam selected a portion of the code, which Walsingham deciphered, to be laser cut into the anodised aluminium façade of the building at different scales. Working from a digitised version of the original, the work faithfully recreates the handwritten script of Babington’s code, written with a quill and ink, and enabled the artist to employ artistic licence to create an equally enigmatic message that resembles topographical marks on a map but can be decoded to read ‘A Way from Heaven’.