Zoe Spowage, Sweet ball and socket joints, 2025
I’m pleased to share Blackbird Rook’s next exhibition:
The Satiric Grotesque
2 April - 3 May 2026
Andi Magenheimer, Barry Reigate, Eric Banks, Geraldine Swayne, Jeanine Woollard, John Greenwood, Rebecca Parkin, Richard Wathen, Tom Worsfold and Zoe Spowage.
The show brings together artists who use distortion, exaggeration, humour and bodily unease not simply to shock, but to reveal. Across painting, drawing, collage and sculpture, faces become masks, limbs stretch or sag, bodies preen, drift or come apart, and identity begins to look less fixed than staged - something worn, improvised or performed.
What interests me here is the grotesque not as novelty or spectacle, but as a way of seeing. These are works in which fantasy, comedy, desire, awkwardness and anxiety all press on the human image until something sharper comes into view. Some are funny, some eerie, some abrasive, some faintly melancholy.
If you’d like the PDF or details of available works, do get in touch.
Rebecca Parkin, Her Calling, 2024