About the Exhibition

Opening in January 2020, The Gallery at Windsor presented leading British artist and Royal Academician Rose Wylie in a site-specific exhibition of her paintings and drawings.  This was the third annual exhibition at Windsor presented in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Arts as part of a three-year curatorial partnership launched in 2018 and was the first exhibition in the program by a female artist.

Titled Let it Settle, the exhibition presented a group of paintings and drawings that reflect the artist’s interest in popular culture, deftly merging political, social and autobiographical elements. The exhibition included subjects as diverse as the historic British monarchy and the imaginary character Snow White, memorial crests and castles. The exhibition was curated by Rodolphe von Hofmannsthal of David Zwirner and Jari-Juhani Lager, Wylie’s long-time representative.

The Hon. Hilary M. Weston, Windsor co-founder and Creative Director for The Gallery at Windsor, Christopher Le Brun, painter and former President of the Royal Academy, and Tim Marlow, former Artistic Director of the Royal Academy selected the 2018-2020 exhibition series.

The exhibition was accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue including an essay by actor and contemporary art collector Russell Tovey. Visitors were able to take an audio tour narrated by the artist and view a special new film of the artist being interviewed by Tim Marlow in her Kent studio.

Due to the global coronavirus pandemic, the exhibition was closed early on March 14, 2020.

About the Artist

Born in 1934, Rose Wylie creates paintings and drawings that on first glance appear aesthetically simplistic, not seeming to align with any style or movement, but on closer inspection, are revealed to be wittily observed and subtly sophisticated meditations on the nature of visual representation itself. Drawing ideas from film, fashion photography, literature, mythology, news images, sports and individuals she meets in her day-to-day life, Wylie paints colorful and exuberant compositions that are uniquely recognizable. These works make use of an idiosyncratic visual lexicon, the directness of cartoonish figures, and a flattened perspective, while simultaneously betraying a deep awareness of art history and painterly conventions.

The layers of newspaper and tabloids that line her studio floor are a frequent source of material for the artist, as she encounters images by chance while working. Filtered through Wylie’s memory, fairytale figures, celebrities, movie characters, athletes and other people both real and imagined are transposed to familiar and everyday settings creating a productive tension between fact and fantasy, and perception and reality.

Wylie’s work has been the subject of renewed critical attention in recent years, with major presentations in Europe including at Tate Modern, Plymouth Arts Centre, England, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Málaga (all 2018), Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London (2017) and Turner Contemporary, Margate (2016).