Leslie Willcocks is Emeritus Professor of Technology, Work and Globalisation at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Since 1987, through many books and other publications, Leslie has sought to unravel the human challenges presented by information technology, communications and now digital technologies. The risks presented by these different technologies have grown exponentially together with their capabilities over this time, as signalled by today’s widespread anxieties about artificial intelligence.

Caroline Williams’ work hits on a major theme in Professor Willcocks’ research and writings: as we extend our power over the world through these technologies, can we effectively manage their expansion? Or are we dooming ourselves to growing techno-failures, and to much larger human and eco-disasters?

Professor Willcocks argues that in its exploration of landscape, power and technology, Caroline Williams’ art is frighteningly contemporary in its implications for us all. A further volume will reveal and illustrate the rich themes of history, art and the artist, and the human, to be found in her work.

Caroline Williams was born in Wellington, New Zealand. She studied in Europe from 1961 to 1963 then returned to the Elam School of Art, Auckland, and the University of Canterbury, Christchurch (1964–1967). Her first solo exhibition was in Wellington in 1968. She lived in London and Sydney from 1968 until settling in Melbourne in 1981, marrying gallery director Georges Mora. Her subsequent work addresses many themes.

For a painter suffused with history and the traditions of art, Caroline Williams is frighteningly contemporary. This book focuses on landscapes. The power of nature and landscape collides with technology as a product of human energy, ingenuity and arrogance—are they in a dance of technological victory or mutual destruction? Often beautiful, frequently taking the observer outside any comfort zone, always intriguing, highly intelligent and powerful, Caroline Williams’ work embraces humour, joy, scepticism, event and warning in distinctive and compelling ways that reveal a true artist at work.