George Rouy was the focus of the latest edition of The Creative Table, bringing his painting, music and visual world into a long lunch at The London EDITION during Frieze Week.
Presented by The London EDITION & The Cultivist, the afternoon unfolded inside the salon-hung Berners Tavern, with art, food, conversation and a very good guest list all folded together.
Rouy’s paintings push and pull the body into shifting forms, with figures stretching, merging and slipping between states. At The Creative Table, that same sense of movement carried into the wider setting.
His painting In Vitro was transformed into bespoke linens for guests to take home — which, we have to say, was a very good parting gift — while the music and menu were both shaped in collaboration with the artist.
Over lunch, Rouy was joined in conversation by sociologist and writer Nikolaj Schultz, author of Land Sickness and Fragments of a New Existentialism.
The food took its cue from Dutch Golden Age still-life painting, with abundance, excess and transience translated into a table full of seasonal dishes, wooden boards and huge floral arrangements.
And the food was genuinely excellent, which may partly explain how we somehow ended up staying for around three hours — nothing to do with all the drink, obviously — slightly mad during Frieze Week, when there are about 400 other things you are supposed to be seeing.
Still, there are worse places to get stuck.
We also met PJ Harvey, who was among the guests, which was definitely a highlight. The whole thing felt very George Rouy, from the linens and soundtrack to the way the table was put together.
And yes, we left with the linen. (But forgot to get him to sign it !)
The Creative Table will next travel to Art Week Tokyo, where The London EDITION and The Cultivist will develop a new iteration with Perrotin and Jean-Michel Othoniel, before ending the year during Art Basel Miami Beach in collaboration with Creative Time.
