Rosy Wilde

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 three-bedroom house above a disused butcher's shop at 139 Whitecross Street in the City of London, converting the shop space into a gallery. In August 2003, she opened it as the Rosy Wilde gallery, an artist-run project space, to showcase the work of emerging artists, 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. Vine said she loved "the cosmopolitan chaos" of the area. She lived above the gallery, whilst her son Jamie used the basement. The City and Islington News described the upstairs of the building as being "transformed into one such teenager's bedroom" 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, 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."

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