If Destroyed Still True

by Liz Berry, Tom Hicks

This photobook is the latest instalment of an ongoing collaboration between poet Liz Berry and artist Tom Hicks. Both create work inspired by the landscape and people of their native Black Country, a post-industrial region of the West Midlands.

Tom Hicks aka blackcountrytype documents, as the name suggests, the vernacular and incidental typography of his native West Midlands. The vivid colours he captures somewhat contradict the idea of the ‘Black Country’ and there is definitive jolliness and humour, if somewhat plaintive, nature to his work.

Liz Berry is a celebrated and award winning poet who responds to Tom’s photography, summoning up equally vivid and compelling imagery with her words. Liz’s poetry and Tom’s photography perfectly combine to create a wonderful, evocative set of words and pictures which The Modernist is very pleased to bring to you.

44 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2020

About the author

Liz Berry was born and lives in London. She worked in offices, magazines, politics and for a well-known examination body, before becoming a careers guidance advisor, helping young people plan their futures and finding employment opportunities for them. Then, for twenty-two years, she was Head of Art in an East London Comprehensive school.

At the same time she started and ran the East London Gallery for four years

Liz Berry is an artist in oils and mixed media. She also makes experimental embroidered textiles. She exhibits her work mainly in London and southeast England and sells her paintings through Gallery 41.