Laura Oldfield Ford's 2014 Exhibition Critiques UK Housing Market and Social Divisions

Laura Oldfield Ford's 2014 exhibition, Seroxat, Smirnoff, THC, critiques the UK housing market's role in social cleansing and new demarcations, with bankers in 'Zones of Refuge' and zero-hours workers in 'pogroms' like Catford and Streatham. Her paintings feature young figures in municipal settings, such as council flats, accompanied by handwritten text reflecting on suburban England, as chronicled in her Savage Messiah blog. The works, including Deal or No Deal (4+1 Edmunds Heirophant), show characters in sparse interiors with nostalgic captions, while language acts as a rejoinder to painted images to avoid aestheticizing the political status quo. An audio piece, Pray for Love, includes her statement on collective space. The exhibition's atmosphere is shaped by neoliberal hegemony from New Labour and the Bullingdon Club, with militant contempt for beneficiaries, akin to a J.G. Ballard novel. Untitled, a freestanding MDF billboard, uses printed images and handwritten rants against 'networked leisure provision for yummie-mummies'. A small oil sketch, A132 Hounslow, integrates text within the pictorial space with chalked words matching the painting's mood, differing from other works where an omniscient speaker dominates. The exhibition was reviewed in the January & February 2015 issue of ArtReview.