The Omelette Challenge: Rose Wylie at the RA

Rose Wylie’s new exhibition ‘The Picture Comes First’, at the Royal Academy, quenches a thirst felt by Jennifer Caroline Campbell for visceral and challenging paintings. Her review explores how Wylie’s work provokes a variety of responses and transmits influence within a network of artists, showing her to be a true ‘artist’s artist’.

Rose Wylie, Lilith and Gucci Boy, 2024, 207 x 306 cm 

The Royal Academy website reads ‘meet the rebel painter of the British art world’. While I appreciate this quite fabulous introduction to the artist, the word ‘rebel’ doesn’t quite sit with me. Its odour is too romantic, tragic, and somehow performative in a Jackson Pollock kind of way. I prefer the word disobedient, which feels more foundational, and in tune with someone like Lilith (the first feminist according to Wylie). 

Disobedience has a particular relationship to risk. At a time when artists are increasingly asked to explain and justify their work before even reaching for their materials, and with many galleries in risk-averse mode, choosing risk in the process of artmaking feels more disobedient than ever. But the apparent safety of predictable and easily explainable art is a nullifying mirage that must be avoided by galleries, art institutions and most especially, artists. 

‘The Picture Comes First’ is curated in a way that allows the paintings to speak for themselves, with groupings of works and well-selected themes weaving through but not forcing the work to become over-digestible. The work keeps its sharp bite and its mysteries are left un-drained. Both the artist and the curator have taken risks, and it has paid off, producing a genuinely engaging exhibition. 

Wylie put it more concisely when she said, ‘I quite like risk’ (In conversation with Frances Morris, Royal Academy, 2019). She has always understood that the studio is no place to be cautious (or tidy) and that the canvas is no place for making safe bets. All those years when the paintings were piling up, along with the layers of residue from daily life, Wylie’s commitment to risk never faltered. Most impressively, her recent mega success has not dampened this approach. It is palpable in every blob and dash of paint, from the oldest to the newest of the works that now scale the grand old walls of the Royal Academy, making for an exhilarating ride.   

 

Rose Wylie, A Handsome Couple, 2022, oil on canvas, 174.5 x 183.5 cm

 

‘A Handsome Couple’ is one of my favourite paintings in the exhibition. A prawn-like wide-eyed Duchess with a tiny stern mouth stares out at me, her pink hand uncomfortably squished through her blocky Duke husband’s arm, their shoulders merging in a way that makes no sense. A miniature curvy blond in a flattering tight dress, without identifiable hands or feet, dances in front of the Duke’s other shoulder, looked at by a loosely scored out pointy-nosed face with a top knot partially entering the painting on the right-hand side. 

Listing of the contents of a Wylie painting is a fun game. It also helps demonstrate something key in her work. Her starting points are distilled from the variety of everyday life (television, a memory, a Rembrandt painting, a breakfast, a scriptural figure, newspapers, a skirt, a park bench et cetera) but become something else through her process. This ‘something else’ is unapologetically specific and yet somehow resists being fully pinned down. It is often serious yet absurd, startling yet deadpan, pointed yet loose or awkward yet elegant. Most vitally it cannot be pre-empted, because the transformation that produces it is determined by a distinct process.    

 

Rose Wylie, Sitting on a Bench, 2007, oil on canvas.

 

Alongside painting (often with ill-kept brushes, sometimes with bare hands, or as removal, by scraping the paint away) Wylie’s process also includes drawing, and reconfiguring drawings by cutting and sticking. Apparently, she once spent nine hours on one A4 drawing, making minute readjustments. By these methods the picture shapes itself in her hands. This approach to process can only happen when the artist is willing to make friends with risk. For painters, this means allowing for that feeling of dread and exasperation, when you know that the painting you have worked on for hours might well be rubbish. It means letting the urge to throw the painting in the bin wrestle with the urge to keep going anyway. Sometimes it means starting all over again on top of multiple attempts. And it always means taking considerations like ‘will this painting look good, be liked, make sense, fit an explanation, look like art’, and throwing them straight out of the window. In the words of the exhibition title, the picture come’s first. It must lead the way, like the light from a torch just ahead of you on a dark country road.

I’ve always found Wylie’s paintings to be a tonic in this regard. When I see them, my bravery is topped up and I go back to the studio with more disobedience than before. I’m jealous of those who have not come across her work previously and who get to experience it for the first time in such an extensive and lively clump in this exhibition. 

The first of her paintings I remember seeing is ‘City Road’ (1999). Friend and artist Paul Kindersley pointed it out to me, sometime around 2013. I don’t remember where I saw it, but I vividly remember the painting itself and how I responded to it. In ‘City Road’ a Little Bo Peep character kneels (or stands but with very short legs) on thickly painted green hills, with stodgy grey mountains wobbling behind her and a tiny sheep peeking out from her white skirt. The painting was inspired by the Shepherdess Cafe on the corner of City Road and Shepherdess Walk in London, which before it changed ownership in 2020, had a Shepherdess logo and gingham curtains painted on the windows. My initial reaction to the painting was confusion, it was unlike anything I had seen before. It took a bit of time for me to realise how good the confusing feeling was. It’s as if the Little Bo Peep figure climbed inside my brain like a parasite, drawing me back to Wylie’s work again and again, eventually tipping me into full obsession. Which begs the question, is it possible for an entranced fan like me to write a serious review of this exhibition? I wonder this now, asking Bo Peep for her opinion, who still resides in the back of my mind. ‘Get help’ she says, while prodding my brain with her spindly shepherd’s hook. So, I do. 

Artist Cathy Lomax programmed a solo exhibition of Rose Wylie’s work at Transition Gallery in 2008 called ‘Wear What You Like’. I asked Lomax for her response to a favourite painting in the Royal Academy exhibition: 

 

‘I saw this earlyish Wylie painting for the first time at the Royal Academy show and was immediately drawn in by its combination of directness, playfulness and strangeness - layers which reveal themselves as I look and look again. The axe is so perfectly described with such brevity whilst also looking like it is made of chocolate. A shape that I thought was a leaf is actually a snake. There are so many intriguing components – what is that strange brown section over the figure’s head? I also love the diffused peachy pink line that continues the span of the figure’s shoulder. The composition which at first look is haphazard is actually well balanced and most importantly it works. The caption tells me that the figure is the actress Rita Tushingham, the star of ‘A Taste of Honey’, and this unexpected British film connection makes me look once again. This is what I love about Wylie’s paintings, they offer immediate visual pleasure in their minimal depiction of familiar objects and people, but the strange juxtapositions demand more investigation. Looking. And then there is the text, not included on this painting but something that Wylie often adds to her work, and which is frequently truncated. This text is part of the slow reveal as it comes together with the painted image adding an extra layer of intrigue.'                     Cathy Lomax, March 2026.

 

Rose Wylie, Actress and Axe, 1992, oil on canvas

I also loved this painting, especially the way the title activates the image and vice versa. It’s quite a sparse picture with the shapes hovering just on the edge of recognition, yet it draws me right into its suspense and I really want to know what that actress is thinking about that axe. But also, I don’t actually want to know, because the mystery of it is so rich. Made in 1992 it may have been one of those paintings that spent time in the back of the shed, waiting in the dark, not knowing what future awaits. This thought, of the actress and the axe, waiting in the back of the shed, drives me to look for some more early supporters of Wylie’s work.

Artist Jake Clark put on a three-person exhibition at Transition Gallery in 2010 called ‘Rubbernecking’ that included Wylie’s paintings. He shares what he remembers of the experience:

‘Rose had the paintings sent by van and the huge canvases arrived stapled to stretchers. I had to pull them off and then staple them back to the wall for the show. One was of Peter Crouch and Rose was pretty laid back about the installation. She said ‘hullo Jake’ as a greeting, in the emails to me during the show.’ Jake Clark, March 2026.

Artist Jeff McMillan also included Wylie’s paintings in a group exhibition, titled ‘Reverse Engineering’, at PEARL Projects in 2002 (which also included Jake Clark’s work). Jeff interviewed Wylie nine years later, for Turps Banana magazine, issue 10 (now sold out), which he kindly sent me a copy of. In the interview Jeff describes the process of painting as being about: 

McMillan:‘figuring out what you want by sticking with it long enough so that it begins to become clear, though that revelation can be a very long process.’ 

Wylie: ‘You don’t want to do it for so long that you get proficient and artistic and assured, and that’s why so many of us want to go backwards. But you need to be in it long enough to know what it was that you wanted to find out.’ 

I asked Jeff to reflect on Wylie’s practice now, 15 years on from the Turps interview and 24 years on from the exhibition at PEARL Projects: 

‘I think Rose’s work has been incredibly consistent (and consistently good) for the last two or three decades, honing her unique method of building up paintings, editing, and using text which is so brilliant. One of the great things about her painting is that she treats canvas like she does her drawings, she’s not afraid to cut or tear or glue new images on top of old ones to make the paintings more interesting or even more awkward, and I mean that in the best way.’ Jeff McMillan, March 2026

I think the distrust of proficiency that Wylie describes is key, as is the consistent honing that Jeff refers to, and these two aspects are not as contradictory as they might seem. There is both an avoidance of certainty and a dogged chasing of something consistent, and the tension between the two is where Wylie’s paintings find their potency.

‘I was in that show at Pearl Gallery’ says Bo Peep, doing an aggressive dance inside my prefrontal cortex. ‘I want to go further back, to the time before Rose painted me’ she demands. ‘O.K’ I say. 

In the 1990’s Wylie was teaching alongside her husband, the painter Roy Oxlade, at the infamous Tunbridge Wells Summer School. Artist Kath Thompson taught ‘painting as expression’ there alongside Rose, Roy and Brian Watterson. She picked out ‘Breakfast’ as her favourite painting in the Royal Academy exhibition and explains why:

‘Such a humble dish yet Rose makes it powerful, the burnt umber engulfing the white shining out, the black spoon keeps it active -- such a dynamic; beautiful, moving. The Exhibition is so alive with multifarious subjects, paint inventions, colour and dynamism... All amazing.... Rose is amazing.’ Kath Thompson, March 2026. 

Rose Wylie, Breakfast, 2020, oil on canvas, 183 x 307 cm 

Artist Jeb Haward, who was a student at the Tunbridge Wells Summer School, tells me a bit about his time there and his relationship to Wylie’s work:

‘It changed everything for me. Rose challenged my assumptions and made me think about what can a painting be? An aesthetic object, a personal reflection or/and a response to the multiple stimuli that bombards us? … Rose provided a kind of wild and revolutionary idea about what can be painted and breaking conventions. Not an inspiration but a challenge. The remarkable Rose and her free spirit are infectious. One cannot help, after looking at her work, but feel refreshed, amused and somehow liberated. But from what? Rose Wylie kicks painterly conventions, assumed aesthetic hierarchies and stale academic formulas firmly up the backside. Being free of these shackles Rose has done us all a favour. She is a true original. 

Every time I go into the studio to work I try to forget her. The bar is so high now. Despite my acrophobia I try to scale similar heights. It is a dizzying experience. The RA paintings are a visual earthquake... get your hard hat on.’ Jeb Haward, March 2026.

Another previous Student at the Tunbridge Wells Summer School is artist Georgia Hayes. I asked her to share her reflections on both the Summer School and Wylie’s work:

‘I think that the influence between the mature students and teachers at Tunbridge Wells went both ways, which is what one hopes a true art school might be. 

            Straight from the word go I thought Rose was a great painter. Her work usually makes me laugh and often delights me. These are feelings I would like my own paintings to bring to others (and in that way she could be said to have had an influence. She never taught me but is a special friend whose work I see a lot of).  However, anyone who makes such exciting recognisable work sets out a challenge. At the same time Roses work is always as completely original as she is herself. The Royal Academy exhibition is terrific, and I came out feeling totally exhilarated’. Georgia Hayes, March 2026.

I think Georgia and Jeb’s use of the word ‘challenge’ is apt, far better than the word ‘inspiration’. For a painter, it can be a vital challenge to see a really good painting exhibition. It fuels the chase for what Wylie calls ‘Quality’. In the exhibition guide she writes that ‘Quality’ is ‘what it’s all about …something to aim for’. 

This makes me think about the sports figures that often feature in her work, such as tennis stars and football players. My favourite is the athlete in ‘Pink Skater (Will I Win, Will I Win)’ who throws herself across two canvases in a revealing pink dress. Forgetting her flimsy ankles and their potential to fail her when she lands, she recklessly leaps anyway, straddling the barrier between the two canvases without blinking. As Wylie puts it ‘life’s a heap of barriers.’ (Rose Wylie in conversation with Frances Morris, Royal Academy, 2019). 

 

Rose Wylie, Pink Skater (Will I Win, Will I Win), 2015, oil on canvas

 

Artist Jerome, who considers Wylie’s paintings to resonate with his practice through their seeking of an honest depiction of life, picks out two sports paintings as his favourites from the Royal Academy exhibition: 

‘Having always loved both Art and Football, Rose Wylie’s paintings ‘Yellow Strip’ and ‘Arsenal & Spurs’ were stand outs. For me, these paintings encapsulate one of my favourite books, Brian Sutton-Smith’s Ambiguity of Play, particularly the rhetoric of power, where play becomes a space for struggle, identity and a place where tribal instincts of war can be peacefully exercised.’ Jerome, March 2026.

Perhaps the football paintings allow something about struggle and power to play out, something that I occasionally glimpse hovering just under the surface of Wylie’s work. If a barrier is reshaped as a challenge, and if I see someone else leap over it in a new way, playfulness becomes a key to dismantle hierarchy, and a riot is sparked in my mind. 

After seeing Wylie’s work I’m always torn between being totally engaged in the moment of experiencing it, and the urge to run straight to my studio muttering ‘must do better, must do better’. And then comes the problem of what happens when you get to the studio, after seeing these powerful paintings. This often-referenced quote from Philip Guston provides good advice on this ‘problem’ for painters: 

‘When you're in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you - your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics... and one by one if you're really painting, they walk out. And if you're really painting YOU walk out.’ Philip Guston, and according to some accounts, John Cage. 

I ask Jeb Haward how he deals with this predicament in relation to the likes of Rose Wylie:

‘It can affect me to the extent that it becomes impossible to paint because I am avoiding all sorts of references to their work: colour, composition and gestures. The way I have been dealing with it is to live out the issue rather than avoid it. So, literally I will ‘take’ from paintings that I have regard for and put them in my work. Then I work through their presence in my painting until any resemblance to an aspect of Roy’s image, for instance, integrates into my painting. I don’t get hung up about stealing any more. After all we don’t feel that we shouldn’t reference a flower, vase, door handle or whatever in our work?! I have the same attitude to paintings...they exist in the world in the same way everything else exists.’ Jeb Haward, March 2026.

I asked the same question to another artist, Kirsty Buchanan, whose work, in my mind, has an affinity with Wylie’s, especially her drawings: 

‘When Rose Wylie ‘visits’ me in the studio, it is often as a bold reminder of the magic of transformation. Wylie’s vision is so undeniably hers; it gives me comfort and encourages me to look at the world with sincerity and attempt at least slightly to share that vision with the same boldness as she does. Furthermore, it is a reminder of the magic of drawing, that the connection between eye, to brain to hand is vividly apparent in everything she makes.’ Kirsty Buchanan, March 2026.

There’s a tapping sensation in my brain again, Bo Peep is pushing her shoulder into my blood brain barrier to get my attention. She tells me smugly: ‘when Rose ‘visits’ Kirsty or other painters in their studios, she is wearing her party clothes.’

Rose Wylie, Party Clothes (Rose Wylie), 2016

 

Artist Grant Foster once met Rose Wylie at a party. Here’s how it went:

‘We were introduced by Georgia Hayes. I shook Rose’s hand, which I remember, gently cocooning my slight, diminutive hand; excited, I said the worst possible thing, “I really love your work” and she rolled her eyes and moved onto another conversation with someone else.’ Grant Foster, March 2026.

I asked Grant, do you really love her work? I think I do, which is why I can’t write this review…

‘Yes. I generally don’t really love other peoples’ work, but I still do love her work. She belongs to a brilliantly idiosyncratic, British tradition of handmade paintings. This is where biscuit crumbs and the stains from mugs of tea are the paraphernalia, that get metaphorically embedded into her coarse canvas grain. There’s the suggestion of ethics within artmaking, that has thankfully happened, now that the discourse around Rose’s paintings has shifted. I see this as the ethics of the handmade. As a non-Teflon, anti-touch-screen experience of the world that can be joyfully messy, it contains multitudes. Whatever she conjures, they vie for some form of visual equality. They’re democratic paintings. Paintings about finding yourself in a strange world, with the desire to leave a handprint, regardless of whether anyone is looking or not.’ Grant Foster, March 2026.

For me, Wylie does something unique in relation to this tradition of handmade paintings and anti-touch-screen multitudes. While her paintings have areas that feel dense with layers, they also remain un-stagnant. They have that sense of the depth that comes from reworking, yet also a fresh kind of pace, like a skilfully cooked omelette folded in on itself. These dense forms find poignant charisma within the spaciousness of her compositions. How did she get so good at both making and serving those omelettes? Perhaps the answer lies in the oldest work in the exhibition, ‘The Well-Cooked Omelette’.  

Rose Wylie, The Well Cooked Omelette, 1989

 

This review has been shaped by the many eggs added along the way. The process of writing it has determined its form, and it has become more like an interconnected web of responses. When it ballooned and spilled over the edges, I just stuck another bit onto the side.  

Bo Peep and I are exhausted and hungry to make some paintings. If you want a more efficient version of this review, here it is: go and see the exhibition for yourself! 

Jennifer Caroline Campbell, March 2026.

Rose Wylie, ‘The Picture Comes First’ 

Royal Academy, London 

until 19 April 2026

Special thanks to Cathy Lomax, Jake Clark, Jeff McMillan, Kath Thompson, Jeb Haward, Georgia Hayes, Jerome, Kirsty Buchanan and Grant Foster for their generous contributions. 

Porthmeor meets Cape Town meets London in Gina Kuschke’s 'A Place Beyond'

Nik Macey is beguiled by paintings made of layers of sweeping brushstrokes in an unsettling rainbow palette of peach, pineapple yellow, mahogany brown, mint blue, baby pink, rich yellow ochre, sludgy green and vivid blue-violet. 

 

Gina Kuschke’s canvases wriggle and writhe with oil paint. Huge two-metre-high symphonies of abstraction combine subtle and unusual colour pairings, applied with impassioned brushstrokes that dance across every inch of the canvas. A Place Beyond, the artist's first solo show at Alison Jacques, probes into the ever-abundant experiences of places. This is Kuschke’s embodiment of the regions that always pull her back in. In each of our minds lives an archive of our own, of locations that we spiritually inhabit, grapple with, or call home. 

Gina Kuschke, Cool Mint Happy Valley, 2025, oil on canvas, 180 x 220 cm

Cool Mint Happy Valley glows under the gallery lights, brilliantly intense yet subtle. The painting’s potency seems to live in the spaces between brush marks. Earthy beiges tango with fresh mint blues, both mingling with washy streaks of teal. Threads of yellow weave their way throughout the picture’s plane. Spot hints of pale baby pink within the ethereal palette. 

 

Kuschke’s paintings aren’t strictly landscapes, but they stand firmly rooted in a sensitivity to place. Vivid feelings and memories of place anchor all the works, though they often drift away into the slippery realms of abstraction. Such places include St Ives, Cornwall, where Kuschke won a prestigious residency at Porthmeor Studios early last year, sparking the conception of this body of work, and Cape Town, South Africa, where she was born and raised and returns to yearly.  

 

The artist has a distinctive ability to inhabit a place, to know it, to capture its energy and translate it into paint. She says that ‘at some point in the process, a scene or event jumps out at me as something that is familiar, and the responsibility then, is to capture that.’ Cornwall’s wildness—its natural tides and cycles—live within the paintings. Observed outlines from fishing boats in the sand creep into Kuschke’s mark-making. Each painting becomes an incarnation of the place; a nuclear shadow of her experience there.

 

Pink Atlantic fizzes with speed. A frenzy of sweeping brushstrokes, splatters of peach and pineapple yellow merge with smears of mahogany brown. It’s a palette that unsettles, morphing between citrus fruits or surrealism or the earth. Shell Flex is similarly intense, featuring rich yellow ochre in floating arches of colour, applied sometimes with long brushstrokes, sometimes short. Hints of gold and dark brown drip down. A layer of radiant, vivid blue-violet grabs our gaze and attention, drawing us in close. Standing close to the painting is essential, and fun. To let your eye unfurl the paint’s twists and turns— that is to delve into Kuschke’s magic. 

Gina Kuschke, Shell Flex (Porthmeor), 2025, oil on canvas, 200 x 250 cm

Early experiences of an upbringing in post-apartheid South Africa have shaped a painterly language that grows with each place Kuschke inhabits. The paintings in A Place Beyond are also the output of years of historical and literary research; Kuschke gained her undergraduate degree in art history at the Courtauld, before cutting her teeth on the painting programme at the Royal College of Art. Stacks of literature populate her painting studio. Her research and work connect her to a long thread of abstract expressionists. 

 

Kuschke doesn’t shy away from experimentation within this body of work. In Chopped Sunrise she toys with rigidity. Almost-black lines punctuate squelchy scribbles of colour, trying to impose a sense of order to a canvas otherwise and fluid and undone. She plays a lot with colour, generating unusual combinations that excite and unnerve, although I think that in The Red Haired Dancing Girls the colour choice feels a tad garish and obvious. Three central pillars or figures shape-shift and dance, painted with erratic brushstrokes bubbling with vitality. Whilst less richly ambiguous than others, Kuschke is masterful in capturing the energy of the scene.

 

Painted in Porthmeor, Mother and Daughter are the only works that I read as a pair. From afar, their surfaces are flatter than others. Up close, they are dynamic and frenzied. Thick and thin sit side by side; Kuschke uses thinner washes of paint here, and when combined with smatterings of thick gestural marks the contrast is compelling. These paintings feel like feelings, turbulent thoughts, the inside of Kuschke’s head, or maybe of mine. 

 

Layering is key. Kuschke works and works the paintings into intensity. Lived histories of each place fold into brushstrokes which create vibrant colourful tangles of chaos, felt experiences, vivid light, the rhythmic waves of the sea, and memory. Herself and the painting become interchangeable. ‘The painting is the snake’ she says, ‘and I am its shedded skin.’ 

 Gina Kuschke, Westerly is Blue, 2025, oil on canvas, 250 x 200 cm

On first glance, Westerly Is Blue could be a 1980s Joan Mitchell. It’s melodramatic. Numerous layers and blocks of colour are intensely worked with the brush, intersected by sweeping marks of rich royal blue. The painting’s dominant section is a swirling storm cloud of angry colour where sludgy green strikes baby pink and magenta. Kuschke has an instinct for paint and drama. 

 

Aside from being wonderfully visually puzzling, Kuschke’s paintings prompt us to consider the significance of place. What spaces do we inhabit, knowingly or unknowingly? How do these memories mark us, and what can we do with them? Places are endless sources of inspiration. Kuschke has made many homes for herself on the gallery walls.  

Nik Macey

 

 

A Place Beyond

Alison Jacques, London W1 

1 January – 21 February 2026

The Medium is the Message

There are few special and unique places left in London, so every gem that is still here, such as the College of Psychic Studies, should be cherished and celebrated, says Rosemary Cronin as she visits the latest exhibition at this enigmatic space.

 

Installation view – centre: Victoria Rance, right: Ariela Widzer. Photo: Dan Weill.

‘I’m afraid this room is closed due to a Sekhmet session’ were the words I was met with when I entered The Medium is the Message exhibition at the College of Psychic Studies; thankfully this exhibition is bountiful across four floors so I didn’t miss out on too much, and the distinct yet delicate drumming that echoed from the Sekhmet room only made my exhibition visit more magical.

 

Sekhmet, Egyptian goddess of war & healing, sort of set the tone for the exhibition for me, in what was a heavily layered and loaded exploration of psychic energy and creativity. Marking over 100 years of the College of Psychic Studies at its current site in South Kensington with over 100 artworks, the history is rich from photographs of Helen Duncan’s ‘ectoplasm’ to the extremely vivid (almost psychedelic) works of Ethel Le Rossignol. Le Rossignol made the works by being shown this vivid exuberant world by a spirit called JPF, as JPF transmitted through Ethel on 24 May 1920, ‘Only the wave of thought is what I send, not a drawing of lines.’

 

The veil is thin within the college and there are other spirits mentioned throughout the exhibition, some of my favourite works being by artist Paulina Peavy, an American artist, inventor, designer, sculptor, poet, writer, and lecturer, alive between 1901 and 1999. Her works were made with her spirit guide Lacamo who existed beyond human conceptions of gender and identity. According to Peavy, Lacamo revealed a vision of the future in which single-sex female reproduction would render men unnecessary. And this is where I started to feel an extra undercurrent throughout the exhibition, where the female artists/mediums throughout the exhibition had a fierce feminist streak through their stories and their work.

Paulina Peavy, Untitled, c.1935, gaphite, charcoal and pastel on paper, 
Paulina Peavy Estate, courtesy Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York. Photo: Siyu Chen Lewis.

Anna Mary Howitt Watts’ truly ethereal works are beautifully curated here by Jacqui McIntosh, shining a light on her delicate works but also her story. After a sharp comment from John Ruskin about her painting of Boudica/Boedecia that suggested the artist should go and paint a pheasant wing instead (how cruel!), he said ‘what do you know about Boudica?!’ Well given that in her time Anna Mary was a founder member of the Langham Place Group which campaigned for improvements in women's rights that became one Britain's first organised women's movements, I would say she could identify quite closely with Boudica! 

Anna Mary Howitt Watts, Untitled, c.1856–72, ink, watercolour and gouache on paper, collection of The College of Psychic Studies. Photo: Siyu Chen Lewis.

There are other feminist stories woven into the exhibition such as Ann Churchill’s intricate line work pieces that were made on the kitchen table whilst looking after her young children – one can only fathom how much energy and focus the works would beckon. And just across from her works is the striking metal work of Victoria Rance that cuts through the gorgeous midnight blue of the college’s Lecture Theatre walls. If you are a fan of ‘mediumistic’ or spirit-based art you may empathise with my one criticism of the movement and often it’s collections, in that it seems to not be so accepting of sculpture as a medium and often the movement is very ‘floaty’ drawing heavy. So Rance’s work and the embroidered fabric work by Chantal Powell was a really nice surprise to see and I’m hopeful that in the future there will be even more of multidisciplinary work showcased at this very special institution.

 

There are other highlights including Austin Osman Spare’s drawings with fantastical perspectives, Ithell Colquhoun’s dream diaries, and a really wondrous drawing by Sidney Manley of his spirit guide – a nun from an unidentified order. Together with his channelled drawings of landscapes, there is a heavy Black Narcissus cinematic energy to his work on display. Give yourself plenty of time to explore this exhibition, open until 31 January 2026, and check the website for opening hours – and look out for Sekhmet.

Rosemary Cronin

 

The Medium is the Message
The College of Psychic Studies
16 Queensberry Place, London SW7

9 October 2025 – 31 January 2026

FRIEZE 2025 part 5: Galerie Eli Kerr and Franz Kaka

Toby Üpson hones in on two less established galleries from across the pond   

Marlon Kroll at Frieze London, presented by Eli Kerr Gallery

I was drawn to the Canadian galleries at this year’s Frieze London, what Galerie Eli Kerr and Franz Kaka were repping in the Focus section of the fair specifically. Marlon Kroll's presentation at Galerie Eli Kerr featured two faux croc-leather briefcases, square and businessman-like in style – artworks titled After life (conference I) and After life (conference II), 2025 (I believe) – alongside a range of jazzy paintings, peachy blobs of acrylic and coloured pencil. The booth was calm, dreamily sci-fi in a way. I had to investigate. Peeping into the backlit hole on the handled face of After life (conference II), I saw a pine board theatre, totally de-peopled but glowing amber-gold, sequestered inside. Kroll’s optical paintings gained a new resonance in this light, reflecting the artworks of Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian. I don’t believe Kroll’s to be replays of those artist’s work, his paintings appear more like samples; modern mashups depicting the far off feeling of sound. 

Anne Low at Frieze London, presented by Franz Kaka
Courtesy the artist and Franz Kaka, Toronto, photo GraySC

Presenting artworks from Anne Low, Franz Kaka’s booth had a similarly dreamy tone. Working with bedroom objects, bedspreads and boxes and curtain-like forms, Low’s work is said to explore how systems of value are materially manifest. The bright yellow cloud that is Evaluation, 2025, drew me into the booth where I lingered before its silken surface. Affixed to this fabric form is a price tag-like label, imaging nine fingerprint smudges with dangly spider legs seemingly drawn on. This got me thinking about how traces of life stain domestic objects, for better or worse depending on context – ie, a coffee cup with Madonna’s lipstick stain is big bucks, one with my own is trash. Opposite Evaluation two parasol sculptures, green plaid and reddish brown, lazily rested together against the booth’s white wall. Appealing to the extremes of my absurdist taste, I spent a little too long eyeing these forms. As with much of Low’s work, close looking is rewarded. It was nice to see ‘sale’ scrawled upon one of the parasol’s handles – I didn’t ask the price.  

Toby Üpson

Frieze 

The Regent's Park

15-19 October 2025

FRIEZE 2025 part 4: Stardate 2025 – Jennifer Caroline Campbell's Frieze week roundup

 From Clapton to the Mandrake Hotel and on to Frieze, the art vortex reverberates across London

 

What happens is, a couple of giant tents (bigger than you are imagining) get crammed full of art, gallerists and artists, and the result is so dense that it magnetises other parts of the art world towards it, some unwillingly, some excitedly, some with money to spend, some without. This is how I explained it to an unknowing friend. ‘So, it’s like an art festival’ they asked. No… it’s more like flocks of tropical birds all swarming, gossiping and posing around multitudes of art. This yearly art vortex triggers satellite art-clusters that reverberate all over the city. ‘Is it fun’ they asked. It’s a mixed bag.

Emma Talbot, works from Pictures from my Heart: Slight Return, 2010
Findings Gallery

When I start out, I am already lagging behind, as it’s Wednesday evening and I’m only at the edge of the Frieze-hype-galaxy, in the glow of the stellar halo in East London. A small gallery called Findings has seemingly created a slight wormhole through time by exhibiting a very particular set of drawings by Emma Talbot. These works were made by the artist 15 years ago as an almost-identical-twin of another set of her drawings titled Pictures from my Heart, that were exhibited nearby at Transition Gallery back in 2010. They now return in a beautiful echo 15 years later at Findings Gallery, and this ‘slight return’ is referred to in the exhibition title. Both sets of drawings were made during in a time of bereavement for the artist and mark an important turning point in her practice. 

 

What strikes me when looking at these drawings is Talbot’s startlingly playful translation of the everyday into heightened moments of atmospheric intensity. They feature a feminine protagonist inhabiting various domestic scenarios, with windows, hair, beds, intimacy and low lighting building a diary-like dreamscape. Described in a weirdly cartoonish and almost doll-like way, the figures are absurd with giant faceless heads, yet convincing and somehow retaining familiarity. Talbot’s extraordinary lines curl and flow from work to work, weaving distinctive handwritten text and abstract lines into the scenes. It reminds me of the way music can stitch together a fragmented narrative. The blank space between the lines become as important as pauses in sound. I get the sense that these works were borne through that golden kind of reckless-but-focused process that I am always striving to find and hold on to as an artist. As I leave, the narrow gallery space is glowing like a boat at sea with oyster shells containing lit candles clustered around the entrance. 

 

Two days later I’ve been drawn a little closer to the supermassive blackhole of Frieze by an invite to the Mandrake hotel in Fitzrovia. It’s dusk again and a large and fashionable doorman ushers me in towards a low-lit cocktail bar with a high ceiling. A hefty chandelier dangles above me like a bundle of stalactites, and I concentrate hard on the instructions given to me on how to navigate this labyrinth. However, I am soon lost in the many corridors and hotel rooms that host Minor Attractions Art Fair, where 70 international galleries exhibit work alongside a curated mix of live music, performance and film. Wondering from room to room along dark corridors lit by teardrop shaped lamps is enchanting, lulling me into a slow-moving state. But I must remain nimble because each of the hotel rooms claimed by art is small, with furniture and art coexisting in a tight and sometimes precarious balance. My favourite feature is the works installed in bathrooms: hanging in the shower, on the sinks next to the hand soap and clinging to the wall tiles. 

Kristina Õllek, Evaporating Sea no.2, Kogo Gallery

There are so many gems I could mention but I’ll just describe one: Kogo Gallery’s room where Kristina Õllek’s works glisten, perhaps still growing, like microbially rich fragments of frosted ice. Õllek grew up in the coastal subdistrict of Merivälja, Estonia, and describes vivid memories of waiting at bus stops while staring out at the sea, getting visually lost in its vastness. Her practice investigates life forces, aquatic ecosystems, geological matter and human-altered environments via hydrofeminist and more-than-human perspectives. She describes her process of cultivating sea salt onto inkjet prints as a very slow collaboration that involves ‘being open to the uncontrollable.’

Rose Wylie, Lotte, 2025, oil on canvas
David Zwirner

The next morning, I am inevitably drawn in by the gravitational pull of Frieze art fair itself, its bright fridge-like energy enveloped within the green and yellowing autumnal Regent’s Park. As expected, with the political, moral and financial instability at large, lots of the galleries have opted for safe sellable options, but many have kept their integrity, and I find a scattering of juicy morsels to quench my art stomach. Highlights include: a splodgy pair of almost-figures, reclining on a peach couch, in a vast yet claustrophobic crimson living-room (Walter Price at Xavier Hufkens), a filing cabinet drawer with a powder-coated steel flower that has be gone at with a sander (Magali Reus at The Approach), a glazed ceramic mini-fridge door overlaid with low resolution photographic prints of a white towel folded like a fan and an empty washing line at night behind a barbed-wire-topped wall (Monika Grabuschnigg at Carbon 12), some giant vivid pastel drawings of Benny the Beluga having a great time (Luís Lázaro Matos at Madragoa), a huddle of much-photographed brittle working men tying themselves in knots (Alex Margo Arden at Ginny on Frederick), a grinning spider receding hilariously on a delicate sand coloured sheet (Anne Low at Franz Kaka), a pink tinted snow scene with a distressed figure sliding into invisibility in front of a slick modernist bungalow (Jonathan Wateridge at Grimm Gallery) and a delicious grubby-mint-green football field containing a dainty but deadly Lotte Wubben-Moy and the best version of the Arsenal cannon I’ve ever seen (Rose Wylie at David Zwirner). 

Candace Hill-Montgomery, In Thee's Future Spaces, 2022, Baule African loom heddle 19th century, vintage glass feather beads, acrylic paint, linen, silk, sheep wool threads

Hollybush Gardens

My favourite though, is a small textile piece called In Thee’s Future Spaces by Candace Hill-Montgomery at Hollybush Gardens. Hill-Montgomery learnt needlework and knitting from her grandmothers and taught herself to weave from a book in 2013, wanting to find a way to make work from her bed when her studio was too cold. Politics, family history and spontaneity all play important parts in her process. The description on the gallery website uses the phrase ‘experimental defiance’ which feels fitting. This piece is predominantly monochrome except for a delicate thread of blue and includes a 19th century Baule African loom heddle. The rhythm of the weaving begins neatly in the bottom left half of the work, gradually meandering into a more warped and playful form, and then crossing a diagonal line of no return and letting loose into a slack unruly criss-crossing in the upper right section. Whisps of black fibre swim though the white-ish threads and softly delineate the triangle of the upper right half. There is a tension between chaotic fragmentation and delicate wholeness that produces a subtle and elegant balance.

Candace Hill-Montgomery, Transactional Relationship in Terms of Support, 1968–2020, oil, stainless steel chain, mixed threads (linen, silk, lambs’ wool, merino, cashmere)

Hollybush Gardens

My favourite thing about this work, and other weaving works by Hill-Montgomery, is the way they embrace mistakes. She says she never takes anything out once it has happened during the weaving process, so any chance irregularity becomes a compass and a spark of curiosity to shape the way forward. The various objects and materials in these works feel like they have been found and gathered in spontaneous bursts, and it’s as if she could effortlessly absorb almost any material, object, image or topic into them. The things that she chooses to include gain a particular charisma due to the way she incorporates and places them in proximity to the other parts. Each weaving work is like a layered story that carries and elevates these gathered elements, giving them new power. This quality makes me think of one my favourite essays, the Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, in which Ursula K Le Guin describes a novel as ‘a medicine bundle holding things in a particular powerful relationship to one another’. 

 

Taking a last looking at this favourite work before I exit the fair, I am reminded of beauty found in irregular spider’s webs, where the spider has strayed from the prescribed formula, perhaps reworking an area of the web after it has been broken. It occurs to me that both astrologers and religious thinkers have compared the universe to a spider’s web. 

 

It is time to fight gravity and claw my way out of this super-dense-art-crush before it starts to evaporate. This is alien17, setting a course for home, the studio, alpha quadrant, star date 2025.

 

Jennifer Caroline Campbell

 

 

Emma Talbot, Pictures from my Heart: Slight Return, 
Findings Gallery, 85 Clifden Road, London E5, 15 - 24 October 2025

 

Minor Attractions, Mandrake Hotel, Newman Street, London W1, 14-18 October 2025

 

Frieze, The Regent's Park, London NW1, 15-19 October 2025