A Thoroughly Modern Matriarch — 1’41” 4k 

When Angela Flowers opened a tiny gallery above the Artists International Association in 1970, few believed she would last. The London art world — from the establishment dealers of Bond Street to fashionable provocateurs such as Robert Fraser and Kasmin— was overwhelmingly male, closed, and resistant to outsiders. Angela was neither connected nor conventional.

Her first exhibition with Patrick Hughes set the tone. She championed emerging artists like Tom Phillips, embraced risk, and welcomed provocation — even allowing Ian Breakwell to dump tons of earth onto her pristine white floor. She didn’t just show art; she created a scene. She entertained widely, built a fiercely eclectic network, and — crucially — sold work. A lot of it. Against the odds, she became a force in contemporary British art.

But beneath this seemingly fairy-tale rise lies a deeper story. Angela emerged from a post-war suburban world where women were expected to smooth the path for their husbands, not carve their own. She rejected that script entirely. She wanted what men had and were holding onto despite the social revolution of the sixties. While raising her children, she weaponised her formidable eye, her charisma, and a restless appetite for culture, forging a new role: dealer, tastemaker, and matriarch.

Her life took another unexpected turn with the birth of her fifth child, Rachel, conceived during an affair with magazine editor Robert Heller and diagnosed with Down’s syndrome. Urged to have the baby “taken away,” Angela refused. Instead, she made Rachel central to her life. Their bond — unconventional, defiant, and deeply loving — reshaped Angela’s priorities and became one of the most profound relationships of her life.

A Thoroughly Modern Matriarch reconstructs this remarkable journey through unseen archival footage and photographs, and the voices of those who were there. Contributors include Dame Joan Bakewell, Sir Nicholas Serota, Andrew Logan, Maggi Hambling and Zandra Rhodes, alongside artists Patrick Hughes, Tom Phillips, Glen Baxter, David Hepher, Boyd & Evans and Lucy Jones, all of whom recall being taken under her wing. The story is also told intimately by her sons Adam, Matthew and Daniel, and through the wise, candid reflections of Angela herself, filmed a decade earlier by Don Boyd.

This is the story of a woman who defied convention, built a cultural powerhouse from a single room, and redefined what it meant to be both a mother and a pioneer — a thoroughly modern matriarch who changed the face of British contemporary art.