Ed Atkins

Ed Atkins is one of the most influential artists of his generation. Troubled by melancholy, undermined by bathos, and tempered with humor, his works pit a weightless digital life against a corporal world of craft and touch, allegorizing 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Essays from leading scholars, authors, and curators, alongside previously unpublished behind-the-scenes production photographs and a curated selection of new drawings, collectively probe Atkins’s practice to ask: What kind of realism is at stake here?

Accompanying Tate Britain’s major exhibition of contemporary artist Ed Atkins, this career-spanning monograph is a must-have for all fans of Ed Atkins and contemporary art.

Nathan Ladd is assistant curator of contemporary art at Tate Britain. Polly Staple is director of collection, British Art at Tate Britain. Featuring additional contributions by Hal Foster, Ben Lerner, Kathryn Scanlan, and Jamie Stevens.