Laura Oldfield Ford: Transmissions from a Discarded Future
The acclaimed artist Laura Oldfield Ford, author of Savage Messiah, is currently exhibiting a selection of her works at Hales Gallery. Transmissions from a Discarded Future collects images of "confrontational billboards, tender portraits and maps of riot torn postcodes," forming "an unfinished collage where the hidden narratives of the city are made fleetingly visible." Ford invites the visitors to explore "London's large abandoned housing estates," inhabited by
ghosts of brutalist architecture, 90s convoy culture, rave scenes, 80s political movements and a virulent black economy of scavengers, peddlers and shoplifters.
But there is not just alienation in Ford's art:
In the sudden moment of collective engagement the city becomes elevated, it is then that it belongs to you. Platitudes rendered anodyne in aspirational ad campaigns become splinters in the spectacle. 'It is your time, seize the moment" ... The street becomes the territory of the collective, in that instant rubble strewn avenues open and a multitude of futures beckon.
Transmissions from a Discarded Future will be on show at Hales Gallery until 14 January 2012.
Visit Laura Oldfield Ford's blog to see a preview of some of the works collected in the exhibition.