When I arrive at No. 9 Conduit Street, the Mayfair location of sketch London, two members of the restaurant's staff are touching up its pillared, red-and-white entrance ahead of a press breakfast marking the launch of the venue's annual art and design exhibition.
Launched on September 12, Dreamscapes is an imaginative, uplifting group show bringing together new artworks from French visionary fashion designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, award-winning London designer Paul Cocksedge, and Central Saint Martins womenswear graduate Ida Immendorff. Their creations embrace the eclecticism of the restaurant, amplifying its interiors through cascades of color, texture, and light.
It only takes a moment's glance around its eras-spanning rooms to realize that sketch London isn't your regular eatery: five restaurants and bars can be found at the same address, including the Gallery, the Parlour, the Lecture Room & Library, the Glade, and the East Bar & Pods. Iranian-French architect and designer India Mahdavi's recently revamped Gallery — once famous for its candyfloss ambiance and now radiating a soft, golden glow and entirely adorned with Yinka Shonibare's art — is arguably the best-known of them.
But the history of No. 9 Conduit Street didn't begin with the opening of its food and drink destinations in 2002. In 1961, this Grade II* listed building became the London salon of Christian Dior. Before that, it housed the Royal Institute of British Architects and even hosted a speech by suffragette Dame Millicent Fawcett, after whom a private dining area in chef Pierre Gagnaire's three-Michelin-starred restaurant, Lecture Room & Library, is named. Sparked by that anecdote, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac and Ida Immendorff’s three-part, joint contribution to Dreamscapes is a celebration of womanhood at its most daring.
Titled Home of the Braves, their body of work honors the "unwavering suffragette spirit" by re-appropriating traditional royal standards into an eye-catching exploration of fearless femininity. At the entrance hall, multicolored flags covered in aspirational slogans float above visitors' heads as they move across a retro dancefloor-like, mesmerizing rug designed by de Castelbajac in collaboration with Milanese house cc-tapis.
The three alcoves of the reception area, reinvented by Immendorff's amusing textile sculptures, become the stage of The Armoury — a series of worn aprons decorated with "shields, coats of arms, and imaginary weapons", referencing "the combative and heroic spirit of the suffragettes". The final chapter unfolds across sketch London's Pods, renamed the Epic Room for the event, where mediaeval crests placed on each of the egg-shaped structures of the whimsical location echo "the noble bravery of 9 Conduit Street's previous occupants".
Remembering his first encounter with long-term friend and fellow fashion disruptor Vivienne Westwood, to whom Home of the Braves is dedicated, de Castelbajac credits the late designer with imbuing him with the feminist values that, throughout her career, were at the forefront of her work.
"It was 1973, my first year in London when, walking around the city, I came across Vivienne's first-ever shop," recalls the artist during the exhibition's launch. "In one of the windows, there was a T-shirt with chicken bones that read 'sex' and 'rock and roll'". His friendship with Westwood introduced him to the power of courageous women, to whom de Castelbajac pays homage in this show. "I want to hijack England's aristocratic, masculine codes of chivalry and give them to those women who were very early fighters for rights, and who have never been as modern as today," he says.
Elsewhere in the restaurant, and particularly in the moss velvety premises of The Glade, Paul Cocksedge's Gravity Chandelier adds to the magic of the location. Composed of thin fabric wire and warm lights, this mesmerizing, expansive ceiling installation has a fireworks-like quality to it, as its arcs appear to be stretching towards those who look at it. Turning the static essence of conventional chandeliers on its head, the piece "allows gravity to define its final form," explains Cocksedge, whose work leverages art to investigate "the limits of technology and materials".
Speaking with him during the opening, I am fascinated to hear that, despite its volume and intricateness, Gravity Chandelier can "be easily squeezed into a bag", and that he cycled to sketch London with it in its backpack ahead of the artwork's installation. The idea behind it, adds Cocksedge, whose large-scale public art projects are currently taking over the world, and have most recently graced Paris' sumptuous Hotel de Sully in the Marais district, "is that it enables you to place light where you want it". Being its arms flexible, Gravity Chandelier rejects the conception of lighting as rigid, metal-made, and immutable, instead giving in to the beauty of chance and transformation.
Co-curated and co-produced by multidisciplinary company Alter-Projects, Dreamscapes was realized in partnership with London Design Festival and Mayfair Design District with support from Britain's oldest family-owned paint manufacturer, Mylands.
Open throughout the fast-approaching London Fashion Week, LDF, PAD, and Frieze Art Fair until November 10, the exhibition retraces the history of sketch London across time, presenting us with the layers "of soul, of life, of poetry, of love, of hate, and of suffering" that, as artist-cum-designer de Castelbajac emotionally expresses in his inaugural speech, come to define its unique heritage. "In this show, I want the building to look at us," he concludes. And believe me, I have definitely felt seen by it.
Dreamscapes is open at sketch London through November 10
