The Book of Change

- Blurb -

A brilliant awakening to our vast shared potential and creative energy for change, from the beloved social media curator Stephen Ellcock. Featuring 240 reproductions of art, photography and objects, selected from cultures through history and across the globe, as well as from living artists such as Zanele Muholi, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, Ellen Gallagher, Shirin Neshat and Gillian Wearing, this is an extraordinary collection of powerfully inspiring imagery on the nature of challenge and change. ' Perfect for our time. ' Adrian Searle, Guardian' In compiling The Book of Change my aim was to combine fragments of the visual culture of the past - drawing upon as many different traditions, geographical locations and eras as possible - with work by contemporary artists and photographers and illustrators, extracting inspiration from the raw material of the world to create a unique patchwork that attempts to reimagine existence. ' By reassembling, repurposing and repositioning fragments of the past and combining them with new visions and fresh ways of seeing, a collage of unfamiliar, unspoiled possibilities can emerge, exorcizing the ghosts of struggles, failures and traumas past, providing glimpses of a better world, of overgrown paths in the clearing, of potential routes out of crisis into a brighter, bolder future. ' ' Itinerant image-scavenging art-fugitive Stephen Ellcock returns with a new book revealing that beneath his acerbic, feral and rarefied exterior lies a large, kind and generous heart. When you get right down to it, in life and art, love is the message, and The Book of Change brings forth the codes, keys and surreal visions leading to brighter days. ' Simon Armstrong, Tate Modern' Stephen Ellcock brightens our dark world. ' Kara Walker, artist