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.
By focusing on taxidermied specimens and natural history collections, Fairnington transforms hyperreal detail into a meditation on imperfection, time, and the ways we attempt to preserve life.
Against a backdrop of the new digital ®evolution and approaching ninety years since the publication of Walter Benjamin’s seminal essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ we present an exhibition tracing the legacy of Benjamin’s prophetic work, and reconsider it in the present moment.
This new body of paintings combines aerial landscapes and floating shapes - figuration, colour-fields, texture and abstraction. ‘Kites' are seen from above - painted with brush, roller and airbrush. They are textured and evidence process and changes in direction through overlapping layers. They show clean, machine-like fades and colour blocks that overwrite thoughts, mistakes and past potential futures.
When we talked about his current position relative to his painting, his reference to a previous Stuart Cumberland as the author of the work suggested that there might be rich parallels to be drawn between working with Cumberland’s painting, working with an artist’s estate and questions of authorship around painting and post-conceptual painting in particular.
'Value Value Value’ brings together 9 artists whose work shows a willingness to collapse and renew recognisable authorship - artists who work so continuously on an artwork that often nothing recognisable of the artist’s hand remains - artists who lose themselves so completely in the activity that they become more synonymous with the chosen tool in the labour of making, than the final artwork itself.
I am drawn to images and objects that resonate across seemingly disparate cultures and time periods. As a Thai American raised mostly in the midwest, I am interested in imagery that is “culturally familiar” through its connection to folktales and shared traditions, particularly imagery that evokes a reverence for rural life. Susan Metrican
Blackbird Rook is presenting three artists with Foundations, an online fair curated by Artsy, spotlighting fresh works from galleries that discover and nurture rising artists. This year’s fair includes presentations from galleries in 36 countries, featuring exceptional talents whose practices deserve greater recognition.
Christina Barrera, Nick Devereux and Susan Metrican
