Ed Atkins

Ed Atkins is one of the most influential artists of his generation. His work traces the dwindling gap between the digital world and human feeling, pitting a weightless virtual life against a physical world of heft, craft and touch. Troubled by melancholy, undermined by bathos and tempered with humour, his works allegorise loss, intimacy and love. This ambitious publication provides a radical survey of his career, assembling paintings, writings, embroideries and drawings alongside the moving-image works for which he is best known. Featuring contributions by Hal Foster, Nathan Ladd, Ben Lerner, Kathryn Scanlan, Polly Staple and Jamie Stevens. Accompanying a new major exhibition of contemporary artist Ed Atkins, this career-spanning publication assembles paintings, writings, embroideries and drawings alongside Atkins’s moving-image works in a succession of large-scale installations. For over a decade, Ed Atkins has been making videos and animations that trace the dwindling gap between representation and embodied experience. Using his desires, experiences and body as a model, Atkins’s works misuse contemporary technologies of representation to critically reflect what they have done to images and our sense of self. Troubled by melancholy, undermined by bathos and tempered with humour, his works pit a weightless digital life against a corporal world of craft and touch, allegorising profound experiences of loss, intimacy, and love. This ambitious publication provides a radical survey of his career, assembling a wide range of paintings, writing, embroideries and drawings alongside the moving-image works for which he is best-known. Essays from leading scholars, authors and curators, alongside previously unpublished behind-the-scenes production photographs and a curated selection of new drawings collectively probe Atkins’ practice to ask: what kind of realism is at stake here?