The Rosy Wilde gallery was an artist-run project space, established in 2003 by British artist Stella Vine in a former butcher's shop below her house in east London, to showcase work by emerging artists. The gallery was not making money and Vine was expecting bailiffs, when one of her paintings of Diana, Princess of Wales, was bought by art collector Charles Saatchi to star in his New Blood show. This solved Vine's financial problems. The gallery was sold at auction in October 2004 and, in 2006, Vine opened a gallery of the same name in central London's Soho district. It closed some time later.
Stella Vine sold her council house, which she had bought with money from working as a stripper, and purchased a derelict[1] three-bedroom house[2] above a disused butcher's shop at 139 Whitecross Street in the City of London,[3] converting the shop space into a gallery.[citation needed] In August 2003, she opened it as the Rosy Wilde gallery, an artist-run project space,[4] to showcase the work of emerging artists,[5] The gallery was given an "immediate Brit Art cache", according to the Evening Standard; Jessica Lack of The Guardian said it was "small but well formed". The Times journalist, Andrew Billen, said the street was "bohemianised" but had remained working class.[6] Vine said she loved "the cosmopolitan chaos" of the area.[7] She lived above the gallery,[8] whilst her son Jamie used the basement.[clarification needed][6] The City and Islington News described the upstairs of the building as being "transformed into one such teenager's bedroom"[9] for the 2003 Fanclub exhibition. The joint show included eight young artists who "littered" two floors with their art work, conjuring up the sense of fan "memorabilia" of icons such as Prince, PJ Harvey, Billy Fury, Brian Wilson, and Elvis Presley,[9] delving into the "psyche of the besotted fan". Lomax's painting of a group of crazed fans was described as "touching", and Yolanda Zappaterra's work as "tongue in cheek". The exhibition summed up as being "successful as a self indulgent wallow in the nostalgia of our formative years."[9]
At one point[when?] Vine was "on the verge of giving up because I wasn't making any money."[10] She had not paid any business rates on the gallery for a year,[8] and was expecting the arrival of bailiffs.[10] The proceeds of Charles Saatchi's 2004 purchase of Vine's painting Hi Paul Can You Come Over[11][12] went to the council bailiff.[8]Islington London Borough Council gave Rosy Wilde an additional month's grace to pay the outstanding debts after they had heard of the Saatchi's purchase.[11] Vine was "bombarded" with phone calls from galleries wanting to show her work and from art collectors seeking to cash in on the "Saatchi effect";[11] within a week she had sold six paintings.[11] Saatchi also bought more work from her.[7] Vine said, "I can paint and pay the bills. I don’t need any more than that."[7]
Vine described the gallery and living space as a "tip".[7] Journalist Catherine Deveney found it "fascinating, like being placed slap bang in the middle of a person’s entire life"[7] with the walls whitewashed and employed as an improvised diary—"Tuesday 4pm" written in black above the bed—[7] large pink cushions on the big bed, boxes, papers, suitcases and propped-up canvases on the floor, a loaded clothes rail, and art materials on a table.[7]The Times journalist, Andrew Billen, visited Vine in June 2004, and said the gallery was a clue that "Saatchi's Midas touch has not turned Stella's life to gold", describing the empty space and collapsed stairs as "emotional chaos".[6]
On 1 July 2004, the show James Jessop and Jasper Joffe opened.[13] The Evening Standard reviewed the show, commenting that Jessop, who worked as a Group 4 security guard for his day job, had exhibited alongside Vine in Saatchi's New Blood exhibition and that his talent was for speed painting[14] having once exhibited 72 canvasses created in 72 hours.[14]
By June 2004, Vine was in debt for £80,000, excluding money due on the property, had stopped answering phone calls, saying "It seems every call I get now is from someone saying I owe them money."[1] She listed the debts as "comfort shopping" on credit cards, loans, council tax, her car and parking fines, and said she found this very depressing: "I am a very depressed, manic person."[1]
Vine moved to Spain in 2004.[15] She lived in a rundown Spanish farmhouse with her son Jamie, their cat and £20,000 worth of paint and canvas.[15] Vine's house and the shop below it sold at auction in October 2004.[2]
Wardour Street
In 2006, Vine re-opened the Rosy Wilde gallery, this time on the floor above the first Ann Summers sex shop,[16] in Wardour Street, Soho. She held exhibitions for artists such as Jemima Brown whose show at Rosy Wilde was described as "spooky and unhinged".[17] Other artists to exhibit were Annabel Dover, Cathy Lomax and Michael Crowe whilst show titles included Force Fed Brown Bread, Lux, Give Me Your Blacklisted and Vignettes.[18]
Vine said that her priority was independence, so that she preferred "running a cottage industry and maybe earning £50,000 a year" to earning hundreds of thousands but at the cost of participating in a manipulative system.[16]
Lorin Davies, Michael Wilson, Jacqueline Hallum, Dylan Shipton, Barbara Nemitz, Sara MacKillop, Nichola Williams, Katy Dove, Andy Black, Emily Jo Sargent, Damien Roach (curator: Dan Howard-Birt)[13]
Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting as opposed to conceptual art. By May 2017 the initial group of 13 British artists had expanded to 236 groups in 52 countries.
The Saatchi Gallery is a London gallery for contemporary art and an independent charity opened by Charles Saatchi in 1985. Exhibitions which drew upon the collection of Charles Saatchi, starting with US artists and minimalism, moving to the Damien Hirst-led Young British Artists, followed by shows purely of painting, led to Saatchi Gallery becoming a recognised authority in contemporary art globally. It has occupied different premises, first in North London, then the South Bank by the River Thames, and finally in Chelsea, Duke of York's HQ, its current location. In 2019 Saatchi Gallery became a registered charity and began a new chapter in its history. Recent exhibitions include the major solo exhibition of the artist JR, JR: Chronicles, and London Grads Now in September 2019 lending the gallery spaces to graduates from leading fine art schools who experienced the cancellation of physical degree shows due to the pandemic.
Charles Thomson is an English artist, poet and photographer. In the early 1980s he was a member of The Medway Poets. In 1999 he named and co-founded the Stuckists art movement with Billy Childish. He has curated Stuckist shows, organised demonstrations against the Turner Prize, run an art gallery, stood for parliament and reported Charles Saatchi to the OFT. He is frequently quoted in the media as an opponent of conceptual art. He was briefly married to artist Stella Vine.
Stella Vine is an English artist, who lives and works in London. Her work is figurative painting, with subjects drawn from personal life, as well as from rock stars, royalty, and other celebrities.
The Stuckists Punk Victorian was the first national gallery exhibition of Stuckist art. It was held at the Walker Art Gallery and Lady Lever Art Gallery in Liverpool from 18 September 2004 to 20 February 2005 and was part of the 2004 Liverpool Biennial.
Cathy Lomax is a London artist, curator and director of the Transition Gallery. She is mainly known for her figurative paintings which often focus on the female image and are inspired by 'the seductive imagery of film, fame and fashion'.
Elsa Dax is a French painter and a member of the Stuckists art movement. Major themes in her work are myth, legend and fairytale.
Stuckist demonstrations since 2000 have been a key part of the Stuckist art group's activities and have succeeded in giving them a high-profile both in Britain and abroad. Their primary agenda is the promotion of figurative painting and opposition to conceptual art.
Chantal Joffe is an American-born English artist based in London. Her often large-scale paintings generally depict women and children. In 2006, she received the prestigious Charles Wollaston Award from the Royal Academy.
Go West is the title of the first exhibition by Stuckist artists in a commercial London West End gallery. It was staged in Spectrum London gallery in October 2006. The show attracted media interest for its location, for the use of a painting satirising Sir Nicholas Serota, Director of the Tate gallery, and for two paintings of a stripper by Charles Thomson based on his former wife, artist Stella Vine.
Sir Nicholas Serota Makes an Acquisitions Decision is one of the paintings that was made as a part of the Stuckism art movement, and is recognized as a "signature piece" for the movement, It was painted by the Stuckism co-founder Charles Thomson in 2000, and has been exhibited in a number of shows since, as well as being featured on placards during Stuckist demonstrations against the Turner Prize.
The Stuckism International Gallery was the gallery of the Stuckist art movement. It was open from 2002 to 2005 in Shoreditch, and was run by Charles Thomson, the co-founder of Stuckism. It was launched by a procession carrying a coffin marked "The death of conceptual art" to the neighbouring White Cube gallery.
Jasper Joffe is a British publisher at Joffe Books contemporary artist and novelist who lives and works in London.
Annie Kevans is an English artist who paints series of 'portraits' that explore sometimes controversial concepts and alternative histories. They are "portraits only in a loose sense... her works being a composite of existing images, research and imagination". Kevans has been described as "sensitive yet fearless, an artist who tackles controversial subjects head on". She was named number 19 in Harper's Bazaar magazine's "Forty Under 40" chart of hot new British talent and was named number 32 in New Woman magazine's "Brit Hit List" and was described as the "new Tracey Emin".
The A Gallery was a contemporary art gallery in Wimbledon, London run by Fraser Kee Scott.
Arty is an independent British art fanzine started by the artist Cathy Lomax in 2001. Lomax is also the editor. Arty is for art fans written by artists themselves and published by Transition Gallery's editions department, the artist-run space in East London.
Sartorial Contemporary Art (2005–2010) was an artist-run gallery founded by Gretta Sarfaty Marchant, artist and curator, as a project-led space in central London, England. Originally based in an 18th-century Georgian house on Kensington Church Street. Sartorial Contemporary Art moved to Kings Cross in October 2008 where it has built a reputation for embracing newly emerging artists.
James Jessop is a British contemporary artist. He trained at The Royal College of Art (RCA) and Coventry University. He lectures at City and Guilds of London Art School.
Alex Gene Morrison is a contemporary painter and video/animator born in Birmingham in 1975. He studied painting at the Royal College of Art between 2000 and 2002.
The Free Art Fair was an exhibition of contemporary artworks and performance art in London in 2007, 2008, and 2009. Each fair culminated with all the artworks being given away at the end. Jasper Joffe, the founder, claims he set up the fair to "do something different from what everyone else is doing at this time of year and non-commercial, and something that excites people and values art, not selling."
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