Biting the Hand: Traces of Resistance in the Art & Language Diaspora

Edited, compiled and introduced by Paul Wood, Biting the Hand: Traces of Resistance in the Art & Language Diaspora is about a dissident formation of artists active in the UK in the 1970s and 80s. The book tells the story of artists engaging with a critique of then-contemporary modernist art education, who have embarked on a series of theoretical investigations which became increasingly politicized under the pressures of an evolving social crisis. Biting the Hand has three parts: a retrospective introduction setting the formation in its historical context, and two annotated documentary sections presenting examples of the work as both text and image, written and edited by Paul Wood. It also includes a foreword by Sezgin Boynik, publisher, and an afterword by Ann Stephen, curator and art historian, further expanding on the book’s subject.