A-Z

Lars Arrhenius' A-Z presents a 96 page, full colour artist's book that borrows the format of the classic street guide. It features narratives comprising 18 characters in scenarios that evolve through more than 250 illustrations. These stories traverse and intersect across the map horizontally, vertically and diagonally in a web-like formation reminiscent of the underground network. From the tragic to the romantic, the absurd to the cynical, they encapsulate the complexity of the city in an entirely fresh visual language. An investigative index by the author Geoff Ryman unpicks events and poses quetions, from the rhetorical to the unanswerable, of the implied and real narratives of urban life. In contrast, an essay by art historian Andrew Wilson considers this project in the context of the displaced reality of the languages of maps.