Barbarians at the Gate | September 8 – October 13, 2022

Blackbird on SuperRare

Blackbird works with contemporary artists who have a critical and thoughtful practise away from the world of digital art. Using the SuperRare Spaces platform, and the NFT or crypto art audience which that provides, artists are able to reimagine their work and take it in unexpected directions. In this fifth Blackbird show, the first as a SuperRare Space, four contemporary artists approach the worlds of digital animation and the enormous possibilities it allows.

"Working now in the world of NFTs, is a bit like being in at the start of vinyl and the 3-minute pop song. The experimentation and blue sky possibilities are incredibly exciting."

The expression 'barbarians at the gate' was used by the Romans to describe foreign attacks against their empire. It is now often used within a sarcastic, or ironic context, when speaking about a perceived threat from a rival group of people, often deemed to be less capable or somehow primitive.

Blackbird understands that not even the most celebrated traditional contemporary artists will necessarily be successful in making the switch to a digitally native format, but we believe that these artists will make an incredibly valuable long-term contribution to crypto art and how it is seen in the future. They bring progressive and conceptually thoughtful work and there is a real excitement for this to be a forum for brilliant experimentation.

https://www.superrare.com/spaces/blackbird-contemporary-art-nft/gallery

JAMES SCOTT BROOKS / KATE STREET / MARKUS VATER / DOUGLAS WHITE

This series of animations by JAMES SCOTT BROOKS utilises the verbs from 1960’s folk songs that were attempting to encourage action and change in society and the environment. The artwork utilises nuanced footage and images that explores a relationship between nature and civilisation and the delicate balance between progress and detrimental change. In addition, the specific verbs have been aligned to system-based sound creativity intentionally developing a pertinent and melancholic folk rock instrumentation.

KATE STREET presents her Celestial Bodies series. In astrological terms a celestial body is a single, tightly bound, contiguous entity. These silent floating entities each pertain to their own characteristics whilst talking of human relations, fetishism and otherness.

MARKUS VATER

Sometimes this is how life feels like: Living inside a large mouth, being carried around, in danger of being swallowed at any moment. But we make the best of this existential precarity, by using the tongue as a bouncy castle, together with someone we like. There is nothing better, than bouncing together.