collecting with a conscience…

Purslane was founded in 2020 to shake up the status quo of the art market and promote a more socially conscious way of investing in art while supporting emerging artistic talent and raising awareness around philanthropic causes. The new gallery initiative is the gallery model of the future, disrupting and democratising the institutionalised art market by directing the majority of the proceeds to the artists and charitable organisations.

Taking its name and conceptual spine from the common yet enigmatic plant, Bindweed draws compelling parallels between the natural world and human experience. With its delicate, trumpet-shaped flowers cascading in soft pinks and whites, bindweed is visually alluring — even transformative — capable of turning a chainlink fence into a wall of blossoms. Yet it is also a plant widely reviled, labelled invasive, persistent, and unwanted. This dichotomy lies at the heart of LaVette’s collection.

LaVette uses handmade oil paints, ground from natural pigments like iron oxides and ochres and bound in linseed oil, applied to linen and rag paper. Working from her old stone studio in the English countryside, LaVette engages with the language of rewilding, naturalism, and primitivism. In Bindweed, her expressionist, rococo-inflected brushwork conjures intricate, mythic worlds where biomorphic forms and rhythmic ornamentation echo the tensions between nature and control, beauty and inconvenience, innocence and judgement.

The collection invites reflection on the moral vocabulary we assign to the natural world — and by extension, to ourselves. In the garden, children may ask: “Is that a flower or a weed?” The answer depends not on the plant’s essence, but its placement, its purpose — or lack thereof. Like weeds, those who do not conform to expectations are often seen as needing removal.

Bindweed encourages us to question: who decides what belongs? What is beautiful, and what is burdensome? What systems do we uphold when we pull out the roots of what we deem “other”?

A portion of proceeds from every sale will go directly to The Children’s Society, a UK-based charity fighting for the hope and happiness of young people facing abuse, exploitation, and neglect.

An online fundraiser in celebration of International Women’s Day. Raising funds for Women’s Aid, a British charity working to end domestic abuse against women and children.

‘What She Said’ brings together the creative work of a group of some of the most exciting female and non-binary artists currently practising in the UK. The title is a play on the widespread crass sexual innuendo, ‘that’s what she said,’ reframed and rearticulated as an invitation to observe the voices of women, represented here, through their works of art.

Contributing artists: Bobbye Fermie, Azzurra Galatolo, Alma Berrow, Colette LaVette, Nooka Shepherd, Pollyanna Johnson, Yishi Chen, Emily Ponsonby and Catherine Repko

25% of all sales will be donated to Women’s Aid.