M HKA Ensembles

Artist Novel, 24.2 x 16.5 cm, 183 p., language : English, publisher : Five Lines in the Sand Press Ltd., Great Britain, ISBN : 978-0-9556242-0-9.

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. B 2030/858).

Literary synopsis

Alice Grisham is a painter. A predominantly intelligent young woman in thrall to material goods and living in fear of the camera phone, she believes in truth and goodness, and thinks beauty is well due a resurgence. She lives in a warehouse in Hackney Wick with her dissolute friends, Chris and John, perched on the frontier of existence, far removed from bustle of everyday life. Alice visits museums, drinks coffee, parties, takes drugs, considers the merits of abstraction, and does no work on that fourth painting she still hasn't started. Desperately uncertain about her future, her talent, and whether or not her music tastes are just a little bit too bourgeois, Alice drifts through a whirlwind of gallery openings and unsuccessful relationships, trying to find herself and her place in the world. Tripping through a scene achingly real to anyone growing up young and trendy in London in the early naughties, we are introduced to a cast of bright new things, indie-boy muscle boys and grade-A gays, all of whom Alice has to negotiate on her journey to a life just a little more substantial.