and per se and - Part XV: Louise Bourgeois & Rose Wylie

and per se and is a rolling sequence of exhibitions where one work is paired with another for two weekly periods, across a stretch of 12 months. Louise Bourgeois’ Sainte Sébastienne is a female incarnation of the famous martyr, besieged by an onslaught of arrows, arranged across her headless torso like the diagrammatic pointers of a butcher’s chart. It was made in 1992, when Bourgeois was 81. It was a year noted as marking Bourgeois 'arrival' in the wider public consciousness, despite an already long and productive career, with her inclusion as the only woman in the Guggenheim's inaugural SoHo show and the announcement that she would represent the United States at the Venice Biennale the following year. In this phase of the exhibition Bourgeois’ Sainte is joined by a monumental painting by Rose Wylie; another artist whose work has found wider acclaim and critical recognition late in life. Since her 80th birthday in 2014 Wylie has won the John Moores Painting Prize, the Charles Wollaston Award, and has been elected to the RA. Her paintings, usually large in scale, have an unbridled energy and a joyfully direct visual language in which text and image jostle for position. This autumn, as she approaches her 84th birthday, Wylie is preparing for her first major Museum show in London, at the Serpentine Gallery, from 29 November - 4 February.