Note perfect: Ed Atkins’s daily Post-it drawings – in pictures
In 2020, the English artist Ed Atkins started drawing on Post-it notes and sticking them to his daughter’s school lunchbox. As well as “little hellos”, they were also, amid the power-down of the pandemic, “a way for me to achieve something every day”, says Atkins. Some of the drawings are cute if a bit creepy – a smiley-faced ghost, a bell lifted to reveal a foetal human underneath – while others involving axes and claws might induce nightmares in adults, let alone children. What began as a private father-daughter ritual has since become integral to Atkins’s practice, which uses video and animation to explore how the digital world affects our sense of self. For his forthcoming show at Tate Britain, he wanted the Post-its to take centre stage – and “to be the legend at the bottom of the map, to teach a way of looking and accepting and feeling that might be useful for everything else”.Ed Atkins runs at Tate Britain from 2 April to 25 August 2025 Continue reading...

In 2020, the English artist Ed Atkins started drawing on Post-it notes and sticking them to his daughter’s school lunchbox. As well as “little hellos”, they were also, amid the power-down of the pandemic, “a way for me to achieve something every day”, says Atkins. Some of the drawings are cute if a bit creepy – a smiley-faced ghost, a bell lifted to reveal a foetal human underneath – while others involving axes and claws might induce nightmares in adults, let alone children. What began as a private father-daughter ritual has since become integral to Atkins’s practice, which uses video and animation to explore how the digital world affects our sense of self. For his forthcoming show at Tate Britain, he wanted the Post-its to take centre stage – and “to be the legend at the bottom of the map, to teach a way of looking and accepting and feeling that might be useful for everything else”.
Continue reading...