Bertie Blackman

There is mystery in the nighttime. What you see and what you imagine might be there – these are shifting spaces that never stay the same. The night world is one I have explored again and again over the years, through songwriting and through my paintings.

When thinking about this series, I took a long walk through the back streets of Kings Cross and found a whole secret universe. Soft, eerie shadows projected around the buildings and the pavement; memories and ephemera came alive. So, I photographed them.

The four works in this exhibition are lifted from these solitary moments. Each painting plays between high-key focus points and blurry reflections and refracted light. Outside worlds, inside worlds, quiet and deep worlds. Each piece is a window to this world – or a portal into the next. A glimpse of what might be there if we paused and let the night arrive to us.

This selection marks my first collection of abstract works, leaning away from explicit narrative and falling into the pools of the possible. When narratives fall away, how do they feel? What do these shadows look like? A tree becomes a shadow, and a shadow dissolves into darkness, and we tumble into the softness that is there all around us.

This is Night Time, My Time.

Bertie Blackman 2025