What happens when that eye leans ever closer into the screen and begins to watch and learn from the digital? All bets are off. What we see can have been reconfigured and reimagined in any number of ways. There is no need for truth, logic or limits.
NFT
From July, Greg Rook Advisory will be curating a series of group exhibitions on SuperRare - the most credible of NFT platforms. Please follow @greg_rook and @gregrookadvisory on Instagram and @gregcorbeau on Twitter for updates on these drops. In the coming months there will also be further collaborations with rights consortiums and first class Contemporary Collections.
Rachael House - Resistance Sustenance Protection
2021, Giclee print on Archival paper, Edition of 25, 25 x 25cm
Throughout lock down, as we were dealing with isolation and the extraordinary new circumstances, Rachael House was documenting her thoughts through almost daily drawings that she published on Instagram.
Launching on Friday 28th May is a book of those drawings - Resistance Sustenance Protection.
Resistance Sustenance Protection is a year of drawings - a pandemic record, an archive and a call for change.It reflects on the political and personal of the pandemic, locally and globally, addressing queer issues, mental health, daily walks and raging about government.
To coincide with the launch, Rachael and I have published 12 of those drawings as limited edition prints. 20% of the cost of each print will be donated to the Alzheimers Society, and the remaining 80% of one particular drawing, the viral ‘Wash your hands’, will be donated to The Good Law Project.
Wash your hands, Giclee print on Archival paper, Edition of 25, 25 x 25cm
“In April 2020, House posted a comic strip reading ‘However thoroughly you wash your hands, if you voted for this government – they will never be clean’ (9 April 2020, p.x). Each window of the four-square grid features a close-up of hands, washing. While the first three drawings refer to the government’s illustrated handwashing guidelines, the blemished palm in the final square refers to Lady Macbeth, the Shakespearean character whose ambition leads her to murder. Despite getting what she wants, she is ultimately driven to psychosis, unable to escape the vision of her bloodied hands. House’s drawing summed up our collective rage. It was shared by thousands.”
Rosie Cooper, Head of Exhibitions, De Le Warr Pavilion
Gaslight the nation, Giclee print on Archival paper, Edition of 25, 25 x 25cm
“Rachael House is part of a transtemporal, feminist family of artists and makers whose work is a form of resistance. She revels in the space between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, making use of performance, comic strips and ceramics to address themes such as queerness, ageing, mental health and gender-based discrimination. Presented in galleries and museums, House’s art can also be found in places where it can get things done: in parks, nightclubs and in the streets…
Rachael House gives us space to think, feel, and act. Her work is an affirmation that being political can be fun, that anger must be a force for change, that we cannot do without solidarity, ever, and that by sharing experiences we might be able to free ourselves from the toxicity of shame and find compassion for ourselves and for those around us. And she reminds us that, whatever happens, we must smash the patriarchy.”
Rosie Cooper, Head of Exhibitions, De Le Warr Pavilion
Bottle tree, Giclee print on Archival paper, Edition of 25, 25 x 25cm
The Artworld Post Lockdown
Milly Thompson, Solarium Trope, 2020, acrylic and ink on canvas, 235 x 213cm
An Anniversary
Passing the one year anniversary of lockdown felt like a milestone. The art world has, in most cases, navigated its way through the pandemic. As art lovers we were inundated with online shows and artists began to create thoughtful, original work under the new and challenging conditions. One example that particularly caught my attention was Lisa Fielding-Smith’s Quarantine Collage Series - an ongoing body of work reconfiguring fashion model images of women from popular lifestyle magazines. Once completed, it will take the form of 100 handmade paper collages produced within the lockdown and quarantine periods in Britain during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-2021. Lisa shared ten beautifully framed pieces with me.
Lisa Fielding-Smith, Eve's Non Party Dress, 2020, Editions of 1/1, Hand-made paper collage (+1 artist’s proof), 63cm x 45cm x 3.5cm (A2 size), black wood frame with black mount
Clyde Hopkins, Reluctance State Peach, 1984, acrylic on canvas, 221 x 166cm
Last monthl also saw the reappearance of a beautiful early eighties Clyde Hopkins that had long been hidden away in a Private Collection in Long Island. David Sweet, when writing about this period wrote:
“The non-tactile forms were replaced by much more aggressive and interactive elements in the next signature style. The change took place around late 1983 and the results were displayed in an exhibition of new paintings that toured nationally between late 1985 and the spring of the following year. A notable innovation was heavy black drawing creating a structure that spread throughout the painting like a burnt root system, particularly visible in Kent to Yorkshire (via the D.T.). That the structure resembles a chain of letters, albeit consisting of a limited alphabet, suggests that the works may contain hidden messages, once legible, but scattered and garbled when subjected to a highly active painting process.
In ¡Box Box! 1984 the black drawing is more wristy and dynamic, and supports another layer of gestures all tangled together. The fibrous combined structures are anchored to the canvas ground by a filamentous system of vertical drips hanging down from the tracks of liquid pigment. A Working River 1985 also consists of drawing on drawing, though the lower part of the lattice has been washed away dramatising the section of light toned cryptic writing that has survived and would be clear enough to be deciphered, if its meaning had not been irrevocably lost.
The angry, rhizoid drawing defines the second signature style. But I want to bracket this set of works with other paintings to add what I think might be a productive dimension. When looking at ¡Box Box! recently I was struck by how good it was, and not just good in a general way. It was as good specifically as a good Abstract Expressionist picture is. Then I thought of the paintings in that category that I’d seen, and concluded it was better than a lot of them.”
Clyde Hopkins: A path through dark and light by David Sweet
Please get in touch if you’d like to know more about this piece or other work by this superb painter.
Kent to Yorkshire (via the DT) 1984, Acrylic and pastel on canvas, 170 x 200cm, TATE Collection
Contact info@gregrookadvisory to discuss how and what to collect.
Collecting Contemporary Art
In November I published a book as a gift to collectors and a celebration of the work that I have placed in collections over the last few years.
The hardback is available to buy online and the ebook is available at:
https://www.blurb.co.uk/ebooks/742303-collecting-contemporary-art
It is a beautiful collection of work - a testament to the taste of the collectors I work with. I was also delighted and honoured that many of the artists included took the time to write a few words about the work included. There are really beautiful short texts from #AnselKrut, #HannahMurgatroyd and #Playpaint to name just a few.
My thanks to everyone involved.
Halcyon Lifestyle: Five artists to buy now
For those who take those first steps into this art world, as collectors and investors, they find it is an endlessly fascinating and rewarding place. Allowing an advisor to guide you through your first search and acquisition is a good way to ensure that you are looking in the right places. With no particular brief to guide this selection, I’d suggest the following as interesting artists to invest in now.
Buying Art as a Gift, in The Telegraph
The value of the artist's approach
Using the mindset developed as contemporary artists, Sarah Baker and Aishleen Lester have forged parallel approaches to their creative endeavours. My contemporaries at Goldsmiths and Chelsea respectively, these thoughtful artists have used the open and critical thinking that is essential to any successful contemporary art career and developed projects that engage both their creativity and entrepreneurial spirit.
Greg Rook Advisory Publication
A few years ago a request from a collector led me to a parallel career as an art advisor. After 20 years working within the art world as an artist and academic, I had a unique access to artists and their studios, and a deep critical, historical and practical understanding of what constituted great art. Dealing with galleries, curators and artists over the last few years has been an absolute pleasure. This book is a celebration of some of the work that has been placed in collections, both established and new.
The Estate of Clyde Hopkins
Greg Rook Advisory is delighted to be working with the estate of Clyde Hopkins. As a painter and an educator Clyde had a profound and lasting influence on all those around him - an influence which continues to be reassessed with his recent inclusion in the Tate Collection. As the weight and significance of his work is brought to light through exhibition and publication, it becomes increasingly clear that his contribution to contemporary painting, and British abstraction in particular, was extraordinary.