Image: Louisa Clement
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.
As contemporary art history unfolds in real-time, the story of British abstraction is still being told. Its untapped richness is traceable through ‘known unknowns’ such as Hopkins, whose work links the post-war period with the present day.
The body is not a closed system. It is porous, soft, and yielding—subject to forces greater than itself. Kate Burling’s paintings linger on this uneasy truth.
