Laura Grace Ford is a London-based artist and writer whose work often draws inspiration from the ideas of William Blake. On the anniversary of Blake's birthday, this talk offers a unique chance to hear Ford reflect on Blake’s politics, poetry and continued influence. She will discuss the sensory experiences of walking through contemporary London and the making of fictional worlds.
The event is chaired by Sarah Victoria Turner, Deputy Director for Research at the Paul Mellon Centre, and includes an audience Q&A.
This event is organised in collaboration with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, where a day-long conference, William Blake and the Idea of the Artist, takes place on Friday 29 November.
Biography
Laura Grace Ford is a London-based artist and writer concerned with spatial narratives, contested space, architecture, fiction and memory. Drawing on cognitive mapping and the derive, Ford interrogates place by mapping the psychic contours of the city. She has developed a multidisciplinary practice where spectral languages erupt as fictions and dreamings, a reconnection with emancipatory forces in the city. Ford completed a BA in Painting from the Slade in 2001 and an MA in Painting at the RCA in 2007. In 2013-2014 she was Stanley Picker Fellow at Kingston University. She is author of Savage Messiah (Verso, 2011) and is currently a Somerset House Studios resident and TECHNE funded researcher at the Royal College of Art. Recent shows/ projects include: Digital Citizen, Baltic 2019, Open Your Palm, Feel the Dust Settling There, Somerset House, London 2018, Flaneuse, TCU Texas 2018, The Sky is Falling, CCA Glasgow, Alpha/Isis/Eden, Showroom, London 2017, Itinerant Code, Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm 2015, Seroxat, Smirnoff, THC, Stanley Picker Gallery, London 2014, Ruin Lust, Tate Britain 2014.