Blackbird Rook Presents

Wail

6 June - 25 July 2024

The TCHC Viewing Room gallery, GU34 3YU

Edmond Brooks Beckman John Gibbons

Clyde Hopkins Aimee Parrott Phoebe Unwin

Private View Tuesday 25th June, 11am - 2pm

In his combines Robert Longo paired images to create allegories of unreadability – placing faces and figures alongside abstracted landscapes and architectural details, he explored the psychological impact of the viewer’s unsuccessful attempts to make sense of an unreadable narrative. The drive to decode and discover gave the combines weight and a visual stickiness.

The paintings in this exhibition approach that same impulse – each offers just the possibility of readability. They evoke scrawls and memories and organic forms. Elements jostle, connect and unbuckle – the work is in creative flux, on the way to being finished, on the way to somewhere, an uncertain satiation, but never lands concretely.

I’m always drawn to those paintings I’m initially confused by - partly this is to do with them being unresolved, with enjoying painting that looks like it has somewhere to be, and partly it is to do with a certain ugliness - an ugliness that dissolves in front of your eyes to reveal a far more satisfying beauty than a quick visual hit. The paintings here enact that performance. Within parameters that are their own, there is a sense of each artist making decisions, changing course and alighting on happy accidents that lead to another set of problems. These paintings invite prolonged scrutiny and repay with revelations - they are immersive as well as performative.

I'm reminded of Michael Fried's absorptive and theatrical modes in painting. The works in this exhibition seem both to address the viewer through the performance of marks, and at the same time be self contained and oblivious of the outside world. As painters from different generations, with works made from the late 80s to late May, they manage to break free from the weight of the medium’s long history to create paintings that are not reducible to simple records of the artist’s decision-making process, but are held in careful balance between the internal imperatives of their making and the wider associations they inspire in the viewer.

Greg Rook

Edmond Brooks-Beckman (b.1987, London) lives and works in London. Brooks- Beckman holds an MA in Painting from The Royal College of Art (2021-2023). His graduation show work 'Inscriptions beneath the skin, 2023' won the coveted Valerie Beston Prize. He has a BFA from Brighton University (2006-2009). Recent exhibitions include a solo show at Frestonian Gallery, London and Duarte Sequeira in Seoul.

John Gibbons was born in County Clare, Ireland, in 1949 and was educated at the Limerick School of Art, the Crawford Municipal School of Art and at London's St Martin's School of Art. Gibbons has produced a body of inventive, poetic, singular work that prompted Michael Harrison, the director of the University of Cambridge's Kettle's Yard, to describe him as one of the most distinct and distinguished sculptural voices of the late twentieth century." In recent work, Gibbons has focused on painting, layering coloured skeins over Japanese paper and Melinex.

Clyde Hopkins was born in East Sussex in 1946. He studied Fine Art at the University of Reading in the 1960s. Solo exhibitions included the Serpentine, London (1978 and 1986), Galeria Joan Prats, New York (1990 and 1994) and, posthumously, APT Gallery (2019), The Dock Museum, Barrow (2022), Upsilon Gallery, New York (2022) and Castor Gallery, London (2023). Group exhibitions at public venues throughout the UK and Europe include the Hayward and the Whitechapel. His work was recently acquired by the Tate Gallery and the Hepworth, Wakefield.

Aimée Parrott (born 1987, Brighton) studied at University College Falmouth (2006-2009) and Royal Academy Schools (2011-2014). Recent solo exhibitions include 'Whitehawk Camp' at Mackintosh Lane, London (2022), 'Gaia's Kidney' at Broadway Gallery, Letchworth Garden City (2020) and 'Blood Sea' at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London (2018). She curated the exhibition, 'All That the Rain Promises and More..., Edinburgh Arts Festival, Edinburgh (2019). She has had residencies with Artists League of New York and Angelika Studios in South East England. She currently lives and works in Brighton.

Phoebe Unwin (born 1979) lives and works in London. She studied Fine Art at Newcastle University (1998-2002) and the Slade School of Fine Art (2003-2005). Recent solo exhibitions include ‘The Pointed Finger’ (2023) at Amanda Wilkinson Gallery, ‘Iris’ (2019) at Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, UK and ‘Field’ (2018) at the Marramotti Collection, Reggio Emilia, Italy. Recent group exhibitions include ‘Modern Art and St Ives’ (collection display) (2023) at Tate St Ives; ‘ The Kingfisher’s Wing’ (2022), Grimm Gallery New York; Painters + Collection Nakata Art Museum (2021), Hiroshima. Collections include: Government Art Collection, UK; Arts Council of Great Britain; British Council Collection; Maramotti Collection, Reggio Emilia; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Southampton City Art Gallery; Tate Gallery Permanent Collection, London; Yale Center for British Art, New Haven; Connecticut; Space K Collection, Seoul.

About the curator: Greg Rook is an artist and gallerist and the director of Blackbird Rook. Wail is the second Blackbird Rook exhibition curated for the TCHC viewing room in Alton.

The TCHC Viewing Room gallery, GU34 3YU

Viewing by appointment

Private View Tuesday 18th June, 11am - 2pm

Contact blackbirdrook@gmail.com for further details