I stood against a cold radiator on a warm summer night, mesmerised by a zoetrope-like film shot through the intercepting railings of Bedford Square. This film was shown with its mirror twin, so it appears that not only are you going around the square but also through the undergrowth, everything passing before me with the speed of a train. This is Mark Wallinger’s new work at Paul Stolper’s Gallery, cleverly titled Circling the Square. I get Wallinger in a world of conceptual art that I mostly rebound from, but I always want to argue with it: why is the screen being torn apart? Why can’t it be reversed into nature? Wallinger quotes from Dylan Thomas: The force through the green fuse drives the flower,’ so why doesn’t it come together, not driven asunder? But see here now I’m engaged with the work and the idea, and that is how art works. I felt like a bull in a china shop, and maybe that is what we are meant to feel, trampling our way through what’s left of nature.
Making art is a very intimate process; sometimes it’s so absorbing that you become unaware of what starts or appears within it, like writing down your deepest yearnings can sometimes startle you in a diary. Well, that has begun to happen to me, and it is a very queer feeling to stand back as a conscious person to realise your unconscious is painting itself into being. Showing your shadow becoming reality in public is like walking naked down the street in a dream, which is what I am doing, showing these paintings in Container 43. I shall put it down to my age of becoming a mam goo (granny in Welsh), like publishing a novel where you dread everyone recognising themselves (they never do). Making work and displaying your goods means you have to stand by it in the wider world; it’s not like collecting or dealing, or that’s what I thought; it’s so very personal. So next time you see someone’s latest show or read your friend’s latest book, be kind; it takes a special kind of courage to be quite so naked in this judgmental world.
James Birch Collection
But seeing the art dealer James Birch’s collection on display for auction is a reveal; I can see a nakedness. Â James spent his life married to the art world; how he has survived to collect so much without his foundations collapsing, physically and metaphorically, is anyone’s guess. Over 300 pieces are up for sale; a decluttering- was that Marie Kondo responsible, or was his house about to collapse? Insatiably curious or simply me being a nosy Parkin, I had to go and look. I have known James since I was 16; at the time, because he was older, he appeared to be a grown-up, but looking through the catalogue of obsessions, I understand that to be a projected illusion, inherited from a capitalist patriarch of the 80s. Flipping the pages of the very good Sworders catalogue (with an introduction by Andrew Wilson of the Tate) is a little like rifling through a friend’s underwear drawer; I’m not sure I want to be there, but I can’t stop myself. I knew he had collections of Christine Keeler, but why so much? Why buy the letters she’d written as a 19-year-old, sent from prison to her mum and dad? Yes, she needed the money, but why was she even in prison? Oh yes, to keep the men out.
Mark WallingerÂ
Women seem to be the objects or subjects rather than the makers of much of this work in photographs and paintings; is that still a 20th-century phenomenon? There are names missing on the roll call, Wilma Johnson of the Neo-Naturists that James championed. Though Jennifer and Christine Binnie and Sir Grayson Perry are strung through the pages like bunting, or John Banting (who he also showed). However, James was one of the first to have a Madge Gill show in 1985, as well as an Eileen Agar show, and Austin Osman Spare, the obscure occultist artist. I remember asking James why he didn’t back more women artists; he replied something along the lines of women not being serious about art and likely to go off and have children. Don’t men have children too?
There are a lot of serious men here, Stalin and the Russians, Bacon in Moscow, Gilbert and George in China. James was born with the Bacon connection through his parents, but he made it his own through the Colony Room Club on Dean Street, Soho, the same street as his gallery in the late 80s, Birch and Conran. It was almost an extension of the gallery. His first gallery in the early 80s had been on the New Kings Road, a place no one went at the time other than the 22 bus. However, he made it his own and gathered the old surrealists and the young artists, still in or just out of college, into a modern collage to battle the old guard running the Tate and RA, who were showing Salvador Dali and Hockney retrospectives. Ordinary Grayson Perry, as he was then, couldn’t have been more punk. One of my favourite pieces is a portrait of James, blue glaze on a white plate, that says Eat more beans. Â This sums up James, seriously frivolous or vice versa. He likes to laugh, find the humour, and he is funny, but also serious, and all that shows here.
Sir Grayson Perry under the hammer at Sworders Auctioneers
Without a doubt, James was in all the right places at the right time. That wasn’t luck; that was due diligence. He has the eye and made some good choices, but not all the bets come through. I’m not sure I would have collected as much nationalistic Russian stuff, but his curiosities are that way, and who wouldn’t want William Blake’s death mask? Â If you’ve ever had that naughty yearning to read someone’s diary or look through a knicker drawer, be sated on Sworders’ auction site. I’ll bet you lose an hour or two hypnotised by the minutiae of his life displayed in this truly unique collection of a unique man, or perhaps you love Sir Grayson Perry as so many do; you might even find yourself bidding on something. I’m sure the result will be a wonderful gleaming nest egg in which to indulge more of his passions. Here’s to original collectors who celebrate the unique, eccentric, and diverse artists everywhere.
Top Photo Sophie Parkin
The James Birch Collection at Sworders Auctioneers, 6th Oct 2026, online www.Sworder.co.uk
Mark Wallinger @ Paul Stolper Gallery, 31 Museum St, WC1, until 24th Oct, and also Field @ ArtsCollective, Guildhall Rd, Northampton. From 7th Oct – January 2027.
SophieParkinArt @ Container24 Until 29th Sept. Insta@sophieparkinArt