Violent, emetic, immoderate, improper, impure thats to say its the real thing. Atkinss prose, which may not be prose, adheres to Aragons maxim Don't think write.
Jonathan Meades Atkins, reflecting on the absence of humans in the exhibition, here favours the visceral impact of associated images and words, pumping the poetry-prose with lines that speak of our primeval instincts, needs and desires, in order to seek empathic commons.
ArtReview Ed Atkins is the artist of ugly feelings gruesome and smeared and depleted. But everything he does in his videos or paintings, Ive 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 thats as dizzying as its exhilarating.
Adam Thirlwell, author of Lurid & Cute The universe is a rabble of contagion and miasma. The universe is a rabble of spheres, moved by mystical forces. Ed Atkins pokes this condition. He strokes and bursts it. He is the barber who doubles as doctor and a dentist, quick with his knife and flushes of blood. No page of Old Food is dry, it seeps with life, it breathes, bleeds, engorges, sticks you together with spit. Like bacterial cells on an errant loaf, Old Food is language in growth.
Helen Marten, 2016 Turner Prize winner
