This Dark Country : Rebecca Birrell on Women Artists & intimacy

In the dappled light of the bookshop garden we are honoured to celebrate another astonishing emerging talent - join us to explore Rebecca Birrell's boldly original blend of group biography and art criticism This Dark Country.

'A brilliant book ... A truly radical aesthetics fit for the twenty-first century at last!' - Thérèse Oulton

'A magnificent debut by one of Britain's most electrifying new talents' Camilla Grudova

Lemons gleam in a bowl. Flowers fan out softly in a vase. A door swings open in a sparsely furnished room. What is contained in a still life – and what falls out of the frame?

For women artists in the early twentieth century, including Ethel Sands, Nina Hamnett, Vanessa Bell and Gwen John, who lived in and around the Bloomsbury Group, this art form was a conduit for their lives, their rebellions, their quiet loves for men and women. Gluck, who challenged the framing of her gender and her art, painted flowers arranged by the woman she loved; Dora Carrington, a Slade School graduate, recorded eggs on a table at Tidmarsh Mill, where she built a richly fulfilling if delicate life with Lytton Strachey.

But for every artist we remember, there is one we have forgotten; who leaves only elusive traces; whose art was replaced by being a mother or wife; whose remaining artworks lie dusty in archives or attics.

Birrell brings these shadowy figures into the light and conducts a dazzling investigation into the structures of intimacy that make – and dismantle – our worlds.

Our host for the evening is poet, writer and academic Rosa Campbell!

'[A] wonderful book. I am impressed and fascinated. It is beautifully written' - Celia Paul

Rebecca Birrell studied English Literature at UCL, followed by Women’s Studies at the University of Oxford. She has occupied curatorial positions at the Jewish Museum London, the Department of Prints and Drawing at the British Museum and at the Charleston Trust. In 2018 she undertook a fellowship at the Yale Centre for British Art. She recently completed her PhD at the Edinburgh College of Art. For the next year she will be Assistant Keeper of Paintings, Prints and Drawings at the Fitzwilliam Museum.

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