Monday Portrait: Rose Wylie

Oh gosh, technical meltdown deleted this post so here it is again, in a somewhat condensed form. 

Rose Wylie's latest exhibition, Yellow Desert Paintings, opens at Union Gallery tomorrow.

We'll leave it to you to join the dots between Wylie and the other artists in this post.

Chinese Daughter (One of Seven) 2013

Rose Wylie photographed by Henry Browne for the Guardian

Pink Table Cloth (Long Shot) (Film Notes) 2013

Philip Guston. Roma (Fountain), 1971

Nancy Spero, Cigarette Ad

Helen Marten, Installation View, Oreo St, 2014

Why I Am So Angry

Bob and Roberta Smith's exhibiton, Why I Am So Angry, is on at Handel Street Projects through May 9 ,

Come and support Bob’s campaign in Surrey Heath against Michael Gove, who paved the governments disregard for the arts continued by Nicky Morgan, the Education Secretary, with her shocking statement that choosing art subjects held back children's career opportunities.

Nature Study Museum

Behind St. George-in-the-East in Shadwell sits a small, patient building. What appears at first to be an abandoned Victorian cottage is in fact an old mortuary chapel. The chapel was converted into the first Nature Study Museum for children in London at the turn of the century as an offshoot of the Whitechapel Museum. Numerous attempts to revive its fortunes have been unsuccessful.

The sign for Nature Study Museum is barely visible above the door. The humble nature of the building questions contemporary assumptions about the term 'museum'. 

Stevie Smith / Zoë Wanamaker

Stevie, a play by Hugh Whitemore celebrating 

the life of the great poet Stevie Smith, with 

Zoë Wanamaker in the title role, opened last 
night at the Hampstead Theatre. 

Here are two portraits of Smith 
by Jane Bown.

Of Zoë Wanamaker's performance 
Lyn Gardner wrote: She is so perfectly 
cast in Hugh Whitemore's play about the 
life and work of the poet Stevie Smith 
that you don't feel so much that 
she's acting as simply channelling 
the mid-20th century poet and novelist. 
She transforms an evening that could 
be reticent, maybe even a little coy, 
into something more ferocious and 
dangerous. Sadder too. Like the man 
in Smith's most famous poem, Not Waving 
but Drowning, who swims too far out 
to sea so those on the shore misinterpret 
his wave for help as gaiety, Wanamaker's 
Stevie is constantly signalling her distress 
behind a larky demeanour. 

History is Now- Sad, Mad, & Dangerous

The Hayward Gallery asked seven artists to curate a room with a perspective on the recent past. Their response forms the current exhibition, History is Now. Richard Wentworth focused on the Cold War era, the sentiment of which is manifested most strikingly in the six tonne Bloodhound missile he installed in front of the gallery's facade. It is an installation of dazzling orchestral complexity-  a cacophony of historic events silenced by Wentworth's army of art.

The other artists: Hannah Sarkey, the Wilson sisters, Roger Hiorn, John Akomfrah and Simon Fujiwara, have concentrated on topics from Mad Cow Disease to "the troubles" in Northern Ireland. 

The exhibition will run until April 26th, visit the Southbank Centre website for tickets.