Overview

'I like eating cold, clammy wraps from big pharmacies that are open late and sell just a few foods like protein bars and powders.' Flower is a book of realistic admissions, likes, dislikes, memories and no-brainer observations, treating personal truth as unavailable - something that must be made up and convincing. Taking cues from confessional literature, his daughter's improvised games, poor internet writing and shitty AI, Ed Atkins, in his first work of non-fiction, equivocates between inanity and divinity, ease and pain, sentimentality and sterility. An anti-memoir, a list, a listless blur - Flower is a highly original, moving and absurd book by one of the most influential artists of his generation, formally inventive and disturbingly of our time.

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9781804271742

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Reviews

'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 the artist of ugly feelings - gruesome and smeared and depleted. But everything he does in his videos or paintings, I've always thought, he really does as a writer. He uses language as a system where everything gets reprocessed and misshapen - a unique and constant mislaying of tone that's as dizzying as it's exhilarating.' -- Adam Thirlwell, author of Cute 'Atkins' writing spores from the body, scraping through life matter's nervous stuff, leaving us agitated and eager. What's appealed to us is an odd mix of mimetic futures. Cancer exists, tattoos, squids, and kissing exist - all felt in the mouth as pulsing questions.' -- Holly Pester, author of The Lodgers

"'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 the artist of ugly feelings - gruesome and smeared and depleted. But everything he does in his videos or paintings, I've always thought, he really does as a writer. He uses language as a system where everything gets reprocessed and misshapen - a unique and constant mislaying of tone that's as dizzying as it's exhilarating.' -- Adam Thirlwell, author of Cute 'Atkins' writing spores from the body, scraping through life matter's nervous stuff, leaving us agitated and eager. What's appealed to us is an odd mix of mimetic futures. Cancer exists, tattoos, squids, and kissing exist - all felt in the mouth as pulsing questions.' -- Holly Pester, author of The Lodgers"

‘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 the artist of ugly feelings – gruesome and smeared and depleted. But everything he does in his videos or paintings, I’ve always thought, he really does as a writer. He uses language as a system where everything gets reprocessed and misshapen – a unique and constant mislaying of tone that’s as dizzying as it’s exhilarating.’ — Adam Thirlwell, author of The Future Future ‘Atkins’ writing spores from the body, scraping through life matter’s nervous stuff, leaving us agitated and eager. What’s appealed to us is an odd mix of mimetic futures. Cancer exists, tattoos, squids, and kissing exist – all felt in the mouth as pulsing questions.’ — Holly Pester, author of The Lodgers

Author Information

Ed Atkins is a British artist based in Copenhagen. He is best known for realistic computer-generated videos that expose and scrutinize otherwise unavailable feelings by the profanity of their artifice. 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, with a survey show at Tate Britain opening in spring 2025. He is the author of A Primer for Cadavers (2016), Old Food (2019) and Flower (2025), all published by Fitzcarraldo Editions.

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