Rose Wylie

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The Great Women Artists

Katy Hessel

168 episodes

5 days ago

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the esteemed curator, author, and expert in photography, Madga Keany. Currently the Head Curator of International Art at the National Gallery of Art, Canberra, Magda was most recently Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, and before that, Senior Curator, Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery London, where she lead the realisation of a major re-presentation of the Photographs Collection as part of the museum’s rehaul. Keany has curated shows and published texts on Australian art, design and social history, photography that ranges from the Victorian period to fashion, conflict and portraiture, solo presentations of portraits by Irving Penn, among many others. She has written for the groundbreaking Know My Name project, that put women artists in Australia on a global stage as well as for Cindy Sherman, A World History of Women Photographers, and more. …but it was her exhibition last year that really grabbed my attention: Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream in', that brought together the two photographers working 100 years apart, from very different worlds, circumstances and contexts, but which showed how these pioneering women shaped the medium, with their dreamlike pictures imbued with beauty, symbolism, classicism, transformation and more… So today, I couldn’t be more excited to delve into the life of the 19th century photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron, who, aged 49 in 1863, picked up a camera and, largely self-taught, crafted her distinct bohemian style pictures with that hazy sepia glow, that proved to not only be influential in Victorian Britain, but have a huge impact on photography at large. As Cameron once said: “My aspirations are to ennoble Photography and to secure for it the character and uses of High Art by combining the real & Ideal & sacrificing nothing of Truth by all possible devotion to poetry and beauty.” And I can’t wait to find out more. People mentioned: Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879) Francesca Woodman (1958–1981) John Herschel (1792–1871) Artworks: Julia Margaret Cameron, Annie, 1864; https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O81145/annie-photograph-cameron-julia-margaret/ Julia Margaret Cameron, Pomona, 1872; https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1433678/pomona-photograph-cameron-julia-margaret/ Julia Margaret Cameron, Thomas Carlyle, 1867; https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/269434 Julia Margaret Cameron, The Astronomer, 1867; https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1433637/the-astronomer-photograph-cameron-julia-margaret/ Julia Margaret Cameron, Ellen Terry, at the age of sixteen, 1864 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/269433 -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

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Rose Wylie

The Great Women Artists

33 minutes 1 second

7 months ago

Rose Wylie

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the acclaimed painter, Rose Wylie! Born in 1934, as the youngest of seven children to Victorian parents, Wylie spent her early childhood in India before coming to England aged 5. This was in 1939, in the midst of a bomb-filled Second World War and increasingly fractured world. She went on to study figurative painting, at Folkestone and Dover College of Art in Kent from 1952–56, at a time when tutors would say to her ‘It’s no good bothering with you, you’re a girl, you’ll get married, have children and that’ll be that.’ … It was then to a teacher training programme at Goldsmiths before putting art aside to raise three children. This was, until 1979 when Wylie returned to the studio enrolling at the Royal College of Art, in her early 40s. Her first solo exhibition came a few years later in 1985, but despite Wylie working in her cottage-slash-studio in Kent for the last 50+ years – where we are very excitingly recording today – it was not until the last 10–15 years that her work has been given the attention and acclaim it has always deserved. Playful and fractured, featuring text overlaid with image, witnessing a Rose Wylie painting in person is to see the world in a different way. Wylie takes recognisable elements from pop culture, history, mythology, sport, even the Bible – from flowers, battenberg cakes, sportstars, queens, to the likes of Nicole Kidman and Emily Maitlis – and shows us them anew, in her paintings that are void of perspective to the point that there is no indication of where the work starts or ends. Her paintings are sometimes full of movement – like a football being kicked, almost balletically, with players, clad in yellow, darting across the dotty canvas that surrounds its viewer. At other times they remind me of a film playing out – like the blood-clad figure lying on the floor in Kill Bill – or even a script with stage directions featuring phrases like “getting dark” or “yellow” … Wylie’s paintings are full of decisions, ideas, and the more I look at them, the more her world opens up… Now 90 years old, after a celebrity-filled birthday bash, Wylie is back better than ever for her exhibition at David Zwirner London “When Found becomes Given”, opening on April 3rd, and I couldn’t be more delighted to be speaking to her at her Kent-based studio today. Exhibition: https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2025/rose-wylie-when-found-becomes-given -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

The Great Women Artists