Laura Oldfield Ford (b.1973) studied for a BA at the Slade School of Art, then went on to do a Master's degree in painting at the Royal College of Art, graduating in 2007. Originally from Halifax, she has lived for some years in the area around the Lower Lea Valley in East London.

Since graduation, Oldfield Ford has been working on an ongoing project which aims to record the impact of regeneration on London, specifically focusing on the area to be cleared for the 2012 Olympic site. The project, entitled 2013: Drifting Through the Ruins, consists of over 100 drawings documenting condemned tower blocks, waste ground, pylons, desolate shopping precincts, industrial estates, canals, concrete bridges and graffiti. Her carefully detailed drawings are topographical records of dispossessed and otherwise ignored areas. Oldfield Ford is interested in London as a palimpsest, a site of perpetual construction and destruction. Despite their topographical matter-of-factness, there is an elegiac quality to her drawings which stems from her emotional engagement with the area. Not only do the drawings record Britain in a contemporary idiom (many are executed in biro, probably the most democratic drawing medium), they also offer an indirect commentary on the environmental impact and some of the social consequences of the Olympic Games themselves.