Blackbird Rook is on Substack. Here follows the most recent post.
The last fortnight has been one of the busiest and most layered since Blackbird Rook began – part gallerist, part writer, part lecturer, part dealer. Sometimes it feels like I'm playing all four roles at once, and yet somehow, they’ve started to cohere. The boundaries between them are porous anyway.
I'll start with An Unbidden Quest – Hannah Murgatroyd’s magnificent new exhibition, now open at the Florence Trust. The private view was last week, and I’m still feeling its afterglow. The room filled with painters – friends, colleagues, strangers – many of them arriving out of genuine curiosity, wanting to see what Hannah’s been doing, and leaving visibly inspired. These are not easy paintings. They ask a lot, but they give more. Women in midlife, lit from within and worn at the edges, holding themselves upright in landscapes that pulse with memory and matter. Beautiful, but also fierce, wounded, full of presence. It’s been especially gratifying to see painters responding to her. When the paint itself is what brings people in, you know something’s working.
And behind the scenes, it’s been a great few weeks for sales. Lots of works have found new homes – not rushed, not speculative, but considered placements into collections that I think will do them justice. New collectors have come forward – people who are genuinely curious, open to dialogue, not just box-ticking acquisitions. That’s what you want. That’s what you hope for.
Over at Plaster Magazine, I’ve just begun a new advice column for collectors. The first piece is called I Bought a Piece and Now I Don’t Like It – a gentle dissection of taste, regret, and what to do when the painting you once loved now feels wrong. It’s not really about the object. It’s about what we project onto it – what we hope it will say about us, and what happens when it stops speaking. My hope is that the column might open up some of the less talked-about aspects of collecting: the uncertainty, the embarrassment, the slow education of taste. Not every acquisition needs to be right forever.
At the other end of the telescope, I gave a talk yesterday at the brilliant Turps Art School – not to collectors, but to painters. It was a candid session on how to navigate the art world from inside it: how to build through ambitious proposals, how to find opportunities through acts of generosity, and how to sustain a practice in the long, slow, non-linear way that most careers actually unfold. I tried to be honest. I talked about money. I talked about disappointment. I talked about how the myth of discovery is just that – a myth – and that most good things come from patience, from showing up, and from people remembering you five exhibitions later.
There’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately – how hard it is to navigate the art world whether you’re an artist or a collector. For artists, it’s the maze of opportunity, rejection, self-promotion, and self-doubt. For collectors, it’s the opacity, the hidden hierarchies, the sense that if you ask too many questions, you might be found out. Both sides often feel like they’re pretending. And both sides often want the same thing: to connect with work that means something, and to do so without feeling like they’ve wandered into a private club with no instructions.
That’s the tension I’m interested in – and maybe the space Blackbird Rook can help occupy. A place where artists and collectors aren’t just flung at each other with a price tag attached, but where there’s context, trust, and real dialogue. Where advice isn’t patronising, and enthusiasm isn’t cynical. Where someone helps you find your footing, whichever side of the equation you’re on.
That’s all for now. Hannah Murgatroyd's show runs until 8 June. Come and see it. Bring someone who likes paint. And as always, stay a little longer than you meant to.
On Thursday 15th May, Hannah Murgatroyd will be in the gallery from 2pm to answer questions -there will be a tour with Hannah and the curator (that's me) at 3pm.
Hannah Murgatroyd: An Unbidden Quest
7 May - 8 June 2025
Wednesday - Saturday, 11- 6pm
The Florence Trust, Holy Trinity, Cloudesley Square, London N1 0HN