By Angela Green, Content Executive, H&C News: New contemporary art collection to be unveiled at The Dorchster.
As part of its comprehensive renovation, The Dorchester is collaborating with renowned art consultancy VISTO to curate a collection of contemporary works by British artists to adorn the hotel’s reimagined interiors by Pierre-Yves Rochon and Martin Brudnizki when complete in September 2022.
The collection takes inspiration from The Dorchester’s prized position, anchored in the landscape since 1931, with London’s Hyde Park just steps away, and Kensington Gardens within walking distance.
A narrative weaves throughout the entire collection that pays tribute to the British designed landscape tradition, which is arguably the greatest genre of art to emerge from the country. It was the impressive gardens and landscaped manor houses in the 18th century that enticed countless travellers to visit England to explore its colourful, picturesque riches, connecting them to nature in novel, exciting ways, and creating a demand for luxury hotels to stay.
The art collection of The Dorchester honours this tradition, creating a succession of connected, individual art moments as guests pass through the space. As though strolling through a perfectly cultivated and curated British landscape, each work offers a new take on nature, exclusively created by British artists. Their diverse media and techniques and differing perspectives in turn guide and surprise, entering into conversation with each other and the guest. Two hero pieces by leading British artists Sophie Coryndon and Christian Furr will hang in the hotel’s renovated lobby.
On one side of the lobby, the miniscule has been transformed into the monumental, with the honeycomb of a beehive translated into literal gold. Employing plaster casts directly from nature, Sophie Coryndon captures minute elements of the natural world, referencing the hotel’s close proximity to Hyde Park and celebrating the plant pollinators that are so vital to the preservation of ecological balance and biodiversity in nature. Her work combines traditional decorative-arts techniques, rooted in historical aesthetics, with innovative methods of creation and design. Having spent her formative years working alongside her father at the legendary English Coryndon Cabinet Makers, her work is driven by material, craftsmanship and process.
On the other side of the lobby, guests are invited into a timeless scene of the edge of the Serpentine in Hyde Park, rendered at magnificent scale in oil paint. Christian Furr brings together elements of nature and human activity that in fact span the past, present and future, with numerous hidden elements to discover—runners on the bank, rowers in the river, and the Serpentine Bridge in the distance. Like many of its historical precedents, the painting seamlessly blends reality with fantasy, composing a landscape from equal parts truth and imagination. Christian Furr is renowned for being the youngest artist ever commissioned to paint an official portrait of HM The Queen, and is dedicated to continually rejuvenating oil paint as a fresh, contemporary medium.
The collection will extend beyond the lobby, to The Promenade and bar, as well as the main bar, and in the guest rooms and suites. Guests will be able to enjoy the art when the first phase of The Dorchester’s significant renovation completes this September.
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