Pre-enactments

‘It was in the year 2012 that we went into the retail parks of England. Here were the new deserts on the outskirts of the towns and cities, the non-places, devoid of history and culture. Here were the blank spaces on Google Maps, the dead zones with barely decipherable names.’
Preface to Pre-enactments
And so begins the declaration of intent – to journey to the consumer non-places of English culture to pre-enact the end times. Here, visions of Ranters, Diggers, Seekers and Fifth Monarchists, joined with the Angry Brigade, King Mob, and Occupy, gave rise to images of dissident writings stamped into the architectural fabric of drive-through retail parks. Presented as tokens of things to come, Victoria Halford’s and Steve Beard’s series of images are an invitation, or perhaps an incitement, to break apart these amnesiac zones of consumption, to remake them into crucibles of social transformation warmed by the distant flames of urban riot and revolt.