Ed Atkins – Old Food book launch, with live reading by Toby Jones
17th December 2019 · 7:00pm - 10:00pm
In person | Virtual event
Fitzcarraldo Editions and Cabinet Gallery invite you to celebrate the launch of Old Food by Ed Atkins at Conway Hall on 17 December, with a performance read-through in two parts by Toby Jones.
All proceeds of the evening will be donated to Safe Passage International – https://www.safepassage.org.uk/.
Copies of the book will be available to buy on the evening, and can also be bought from the following link https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/old-food
From one of the most lauded artists of his generation comes a purging soliloquy: a profound nowt delivered in some spent afterwards. Scorched by senility and nostalgia, and wracked by all kinds of hunger, Ed Atkins’ Old Food lurches from allegory to listicle, from lyric to menu, fetching up a plummeting, idiomatic and crabbed tableau from the cannibalised remains of each form in turn. Written in conjunction with Atkins’ exhibition of the same name, Old Food is a hard Brexit, wadded with historicity, melancholy and a bravura kind of stupidity.
Ed Atkins is an artist who makes all kinds of convolutions of self-portraiture. He writes uncomfortably intimate, debunked prophesies; paints travesties; and makes realistic computer generated videos that often feature figures that resemble the artist in the throes of unaccountable psychical crises. Atkins’ artificial realism, whether written or animated, pastiches romanticism to get rendered down to a sentimental blubber – all the better to model those bleak feelings often so inexpressible in real life.
‘Violent, emetic, immoderate, improper, impure – that’s to say it’s the real thing. Atkins’s prose, which may not be prose, adheres to Aragon’s maxim “Don’t think – write.”’
— Jonathan Meades
Ed Atkins is a British artist based in Copenhagen. In recent years he has presented solo shows at Kunsthaus Bregenz, Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, Castello di Rivoli in Turin, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and Serpentine Gallery in London, among others. His artwork is the subject of several monographs, and his writing has appeared in October, Texte zur Kunst, frieze, The White Review, Hi Zero and EROS Journal. A Primer for Cadavers, his first collection, was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2016.
Ed Atkins is represented by the Cabinet Gallery, where he first showed in 2011 and where, in 2018, he exhibited the installation Olde Food.
Toby Jones is a BAFTA Award Winning British actor renowned for his roles both on screen and on stage. Recent screen performances include the BBC’s in Don’t Forget The Driver, a series he co-wrote with Tim Crouch and Netflix’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. His most recent performance on stage at the Royal Court was in Glass. Kill. Bluebeard. Imp; and January 2020 will see him return to the stage in Uncle Vanya, at the Harold Pinter Theatre.
Upcoming film credits for 2020 include; Louis Wain, Toby will star alongside Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy, The Last Thing He Wanted, written and directed for Netflix by Oscar nominated Dee Rees and as Reverend Chasuble in an animated adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost.
Safe Passage helps child refugees stuck in camps and on the streets of Europe to reach a place of safety. Many of these children are unaccompanied and trapped in desperate conditions, vulnerable to trafficking, violence and abuse, despite many of them having a legal right to travel to safety. Through a mixture of legal casework, campaigns and advocacy, Safe Passage helps children supports children to access their right to be reunited with their families and find a safe place to call home.
LINKS FOR FURTHER INFO:
Website: https://www.cabinet.uk.com/index.php?ed-atkins-toby-jones-old-food
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/2613570385377662/
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This event is in the Main Hall on the ground floor. For accessibility info: https://www.conwayhall.org.uk/about/visiting-us/