“I also like how the phrase ‘a dagger of the mind’ ties nicely with addiction – it’s the thing in the back of your mind that is always there. People wear the ‘Oh, no thanks, I quit last week’ hoodies I had made to NA. They associate the art with overcoming addiction.”
Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter
Rose is a relative newcomer to the art scene. And she did not wait to be invited in. Self-taught during lockdown, Rose held her debut solo show, I Quit Last Week in 2021, by using social media to bypass the old-school gallerist gatekeepers.
“I gambled completely, took all the money I had, which was three grand earned through selling my work on Instagram, and put it into a space in Fitzrovia… and I sold out the show. So I hit the ground running,” she explains.
“I had the luxury of complete naivety and youthful audacity and being a bit of an idiot. I was only 21 – if I knew what I know now, I would never have dared.”
A few years later, with shows in Austin, Miami and London under her belt and work commissioned by Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Yungblud among many others, she has emerged as a new kind of multi-hyphenate: artist-model-influencer.
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
“Warhol said in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. We’re living in that future now. It’s happening. So I’m playing with that idea with my Instagram,” she says.
“Becoming an influencer through the artist medium is interesting to play with. It’s promoting my art. But it’s also telling a story. And it’s the story of this character, Charlotte Rose. I live it, it’s part of me as well, but in my everyday life I’m more nerdy and weird and insecure.”
Rose rose to the position she now holds, with hundreds of thousands of social media followers and her work selling for five-figure sums with a little help from a great crew of artists.
“I position myself more towards street artists like Opake and The Connor Brothers,” Rose explains.
“Even though they’re gallery artists, they’ve got their own thing going on, and in some ways don’t need the galleries. They could do indie shows. It is more rebellious. There is an energy, a feeling that, fuck it, we will do it ourselves. And there is a power in being able to do it yourself.
“Opake plays with pop culture and nostalgia and those anchors of your childhood or adolescence in a satirical way, like I do. I love his work – I met him through an artist called Haris Nukem. The underground scene is so supportive. Everything I’ve learned is from my peers – asking questions, being curious, being the dumbest person in the room at all times.”
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
As well as the upcoming Big Issue show with Opake, Rose will exhibit with The Connor Brothers at West Chelsea Contemporary in Austin this October, before putting together a London show the following month.
“I’m doing a charity exhibition at Larry’s, which is underneath the National Portrait Gallery, for Rethink Mental Illness,” she says “I’ve put together new artists, a lot of them are women – because we have to shout louder and do more to prove your worth, so I will always champion new women artists.
“I’ve become really fascinated with an artist called Pauline Boty. She passed away when she was 27 [she was actually 28 when she died], which is my age now, and I look at the images of her at the time she was working and she does what I’m trying to do. She didn’t shy away from her image or her sexuality – she channeled it all into her art. So her image and art became one package – Peter Blake really championed her work, which is really cool.”
If Boty and Blake are two influences and Ed Ruscha another, there is also, of course, the giant of pop art, Andy Warhol.
“As an artist and as a person in general, I’m a bit relentless. I’ll stick to something and follow it until I’m completely done with it. In art that is quite useful because it builds an identity,” Rose says, as she sits with her dog, Joni.
“I’m obsessed with The Factory and everything that surrounded Warhol, like Edie Sedgwick and all the models. I’m doing the fashion model thing as well as the artist thing – so it’s like Warhol all in one, that’s what I’m trying to do.”
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more.
Reader-funded since 1991 – Big Issue brings you trustworthy journalism that drives real change.
Every day, our journalists dig deeper, speaking up for those society overlooks.
Could you help us keep doing this vital work? Support our journalism from £5 a month.
