Giles Kime: ‘Why contemporary art should become a feature of everyday life’

Half a century ago, many people’s first experience of dramatically pared-back modernism was a visit to a contemporary art gallery — lofty, uplifting spaces, such as the Guggenheim in New York, US, and the Pompidou in Paris, France, that were as startling as the exhibits themselves. In 2000, there was a dramatic new arrival in London in the form of Tate Modern with its Turbine Hall, which took minimalism to dispiriting new extremes. The arrival of these galleries gave birth to a new convention in both public and commercial galleries that contemporary art looks best when displayed against a white, minimalist backdrop. The danger is that it can also make it look irrelevant.

Over the past decade or so, there have been plenty of examples of exhibitions in English country houses housed in spaces of a more human scale that offer a brilliant setting for contemporary art, craft and design, notably at Chatsworth in Derbyshire, which has exhibited the work of Thomas Heatherwick and Marc Newson. Similarly, Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire has shown the work of the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and, at Parham House, West Sussex, Adrian Sassoon curated an exhibition of work by Felicity Aylieff, Takahiro Kondo, Hiroshi Suzuki and Colin Reid. On a more modest scale, much of the charm of Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge (pictured below) is that its contemporary pieces are displayed in the rooms of four adjacent cottages alongside Jim and Helen Ede’s furniture and found objects.

At this year’s Treasure House Fair, in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, London SW3, many of those stands that weren’t designed to look like the beautifully conceived houses were painted in rich colours that lent them a domestic feel. They also demonstrated the fact that art looks much better in context than it does in abstract.

Someone who has long championed this approach is Kit Kemp, the creative dynamo behind Firmdale, which owns several hotels in London and New York. The newest is the Warren Street in the Tribeca district of the city, where the reception area is home to a basket hanging sculpture by Cristián Mohaded, a beaded collage by Sanaa Gateja, a sculpture by Tony Cragg and a Christopher Kurtz’s Skipping Stone table, all set against a vibrant yellow and enjoyed daily by guests and staff. For 21st-century arts and crafts, that’s surely just as it should be.

This article originally appeared in the August 20 issue of Country Life. For more information on how to subscribe, click here