Savage Messiah by Laura Grace Ford
The acclaimed art fanzine's psychogeographic drifts through a ruined city.
The consumer-friendly face of neoliberal Britain gets an anarchic makeover in Laura Oldfield Ford's politically biting work.. No false promises of a brighter, better, more sanitised tomorrow here. Instead, she focuses on areas haunted by an urban dispossessed, which regeneration seeks to concrete over: city wastelands where fortress-like old tower-blocks rise, with their Escher-like walkways and bleak 'recreational' open spaces. -- Skye Sherwin * Guardian *
Oldfield Ford displays authentic gifts as a recorder and mapper of terrain. She is a necessary kind of writer, smart enough to bring document and poetry together in a scissors-and-paste, post-authorial form. -- Iain Sinclair * Guardian *
This black-and-white, cut 'n' paste-style zine by the artist Laura Oldfield Ford, in which she traces her psychogeographical drifts around London's grimey underbelly, has achieved cult status in art circles since its first issue in 2005. Be warned: this is a city you won't find in any guidebook. * Independent *
There is poetry ... there is anger ... there are calls to arms ... and thankfully, there is humour. -- Chris Hall * Icon Magazine *
Savage Messiah's fractured narratives, clipped sloganeering and topographical poetics have been, for the last decade or so, a kind of solace for anyone who loathed the coked-up arrogance, the intellectual and political vacuity and compulsory amnesia of the boom. It was a constant reminder that bad times were just around the corner. -- Owen Hatherley, author of A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain
No exercise in style nostalgia, this is her recovery of punk's provocation and politicization. * Art Review *
Looking at Oldfield Ford's work, one sees the last three decades of urban flux laid out as singular snapshots-from the infinite, utopic possibilities of abandoned land that rave culture picked up, to the increasing civic and corporate control of space. -- Oliver Basciano * Building Design *
What made Savage Messiah so interesting was ... its dialectical montage, its lost futures erupting into and over-running the seamless, optimistic spectacle of redevelopment and speculation-because it imagined other futures than the one being sold so extortionately to Londoners. It held out the promise of another modernism, of things no longer going on as they are. * domus *
Well-argued, interesting and informed * The Art Newspaper *
Oldfield Ford displays authentic gifts as a recorder and mapper of terrain. She is a necessary kind of writer, smart enough to bring document and poetry together in a scissors-and-paste, post-authorial form. -- Iain Sinclair * Guardian *
This black-and-white, cut 'n' paste-style zine by the artist Laura Oldfield Ford, in which she traces her psychogeographical drifts around London's grimey underbelly, has achieved cult status in art circles since its first issue in 2005. Be warned: this is a city you won't find in any guidebook. * Independent *
There is poetry ... there is anger ... there are calls to arms ... and thankfully, there is humour. -- Chris Hall * Icon Magazine *
Savage Messiah's fractured narratives, clipped sloganeering and topographical poetics have been, for the last decade or so, a kind of solace for anyone who loathed the coked-up arrogance, the intellectual and political vacuity and compulsory amnesia of the boom. It was a constant reminder that bad times were just around the corner. -- Owen Hatherley, author of A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain
No exercise in style nostalgia, this is her recovery of punk's provocation and politicization. * Art Review *
Looking at Oldfield Ford's work, one sees the last three decades of urban flux laid out as singular snapshots-from the infinite, utopic possibilities of abandoned land that rave culture picked up, to the increasing civic and corporate control of space. -- Oliver Basciano * Building Design *
What made Savage Messiah so interesting was ... its dialectical montage, its lost futures erupting into and over-running the seamless, optimistic spectacle of redevelopment and speculation-because it imagined other futures than the one being sold so extortionately to Londoners. It held out the promise of another modernism, of things no longer going on as they are. * domus *
Well-argued, interesting and informed * The Art Newspaper *
Laura Grace Ford, originally from Halifax, West Yorkshire, studied at the Royal College of Art and has become well known for her politically active and poetic engagement with London as a site of social antagonism. She exhibits and teaches across Europe and America.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781844677474 |
| ISBN 10 | 1844677478 |
| Title | Savage Messiah |
| Author | Laura Grace Ford |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Verso Books |
| Year published | 2011-10-01 |
| Number of pages | 464 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |