Art

Set up in 2003 in the first-floor Bethnal Green flat of couple Darren Flook and Christabel Stewart, Hotel has rapidly grown in status from a one-room project space with no commercial aspirations to a young commercial gallery with a regular presence at the big international art fairs.

Still in the same building in an unassuming parade of shops, but with the gallery now in the vacated record shop downstairs, Flook and Stewart have proved that you don’t need wealthy backers or a massive white cube in the West End to earn artworld respect.

‘I think it helped that we weren’t straight out of college,’ Flook explains, ‘and even with our most modest projects we’ve always taken what we’ve done very seriously, which hopefully has come across’.
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Hotel made its mark by searching further afield than the local scene for artists to work with and by inviting them to stay during the production or installation of their work. ‘Although there was already a lot going on in the East End, people still tended to show artists who were connected to their little group’, Stewart adds. ‘We wanted to work with a broader range of people. Our idea was to create a space that was more socially involved and if artists were able to stay, it created a dialogue with us and the space – not a residency, but more like a hotel – where people could come and live for a short time.’

The result is a distinctive roster of artists, including New York-based Carol Bove, Cologne-based Michael Bauer and Glaswegian Duncan Campbell, in addition to Londoners Peter Saville and Steven Claydon. Hotel’s next show is of new work by Rita Ackermann, her first solo show in London for 12 years.

Another sign of success is that despite the gallery’s relative youth, Hotel has been a regular in the main tent at the annual Frieze Art Fair. ‘We showed at the first Zoo Art Fair’, says Flook, ‘which really helped in the transition from being a project space with no ability to sell work – we didn’t know anyone with money – to making those connections with collectors that allowed us to represent artists. When we got into Frieze the following year it did feel that we were punching slightly above our weight, but collectors want to see work that’s new and exciting as well as picking up those major pieces they’ve had their eye on for a while.’

Rita Ackermann shows at Hotel from Oct 10-Nov 18. See Time Out First Thursdays openings.