On 19 and 20 September, I’ll be opening Marilyn Hallam’s studio for APT Open Studios in Deptford. There will be Marilyn’s paintings to look at, a separate part of the room devoted to Clyde Hopkins’ works on paper and copies of his new book to leaf through and buy.

I’m treating the weekend as a slightly unofficial book launch, which gives me an excuse to put the works and the publication together. It also gives me an excuse to ask you to come to Deptford.

First, Marilyn. I think she is a seriously overlooked painter, although “overlooked” can become one of those words we overuse. What I want is for more people to see what she actually does.

Her subjects can sound familiar enough: a room, a figure, a window, things gathered on a surface. Then you look at how she puts them together. In Fridge painting and figure in mirror, a hand rests on a hip while bands of orange, pale turquoise and pink pass through the figure. A blue and red panel cuts across the room. The space feels inhabited and distinctly unstable. That combination is what interests me. You recognise enough to enter the painting, then find that recognition only gets you so far.

Marilyn’s preparation involves drawing, tracing, photocopying and collage, with images taken apart and reconstructed before she begins the canvas. Mali Morris has written about the amount of work behind their apparent ease. The finished paintings let light through all that thinking. Nothing feels laboured, though very little has been left to habit.

I want to give that work room this weekend. There is a particular pleasure in spending time with a painter whose decisions you can’t immediately account for. I’d like visitors to have that pleasure too.

Elsewhere in the room, I’ll show a selection of Clyde’s works on paper alongside Clyde Hopkins: Paintings on Paper. The book has had a great response, and I don’t have many copies left in my own stock.

I helped edit it and wrote the foreword, so my enthusiasm comes with involvement. Even allowing for that, I think it’s an exceptional book. It brings together work from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, with essays by Matt Lippiatt and Joan Key and a conversation between David Ryan and David Sweet. There are more than 70 colour plates across 128 pages.

These works can be gloriously peculiar. In one of the reproduced paintings, pale dots travel around a black looping shape, with orange bars below and a patch of turquoise holding one side of the image. You follow one route, then another catches your eye. There’s humour in the arrangement, and a considerable amount of calculation.

Paper gives you a particularly close view of Clyde’s decisions. A mark can look impulsive until you notice what it does to everything around it. That is part of the pleasure of having the actual works there: you can move between the page of the book and the painted surface, and see what reproduction carries across and what needs your physical presence.

Copies will be available for £25. If you can’t make it to Deptford, you can also order through the website.

There is more news about Clyde coming in early October. I’ll write properly about that once the exhibition announcement is public. For now, this is a chance to spend time with the work before the next round of invitations arrives.

As Blackbird Rook develops, this is work I want to keep close: helping paintings find an audience, returning to artists who deserve sustained attention and making books that people will keep using. A weekend in a studio gives that a practical shape.

Come by if you can. You don’t need to be collecting, or contemplating collecting. There will be plenty to look at across APT, and I’ll be there with Marilyn’s paintings and Clyde’s book. I’d be glad to see you.

APT Open Studios
Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 September 2026
1–6pm both days
6 Creekside, Harold Wharf, Deptford, London SE8 4SA

Browse or buy Clyde’s book

Greg