Ewan Venters talks art and hospitality at the new Audley

11 May 2022 by

The chief executive of hospitality group Artfarm and art gallery Hauser & Wirth talks about merging art and hospitality and opening the group's first London site in Mayfair

You joined Artfarm after heading up Fortnum & Mason, where you were chief executive for nine years. How have you found the move from retail to hospitality?

My time at Fortnum & Mason was fantastic, it was such a historical business to have led. It gave me that experience of mixing retail with hospitality, but there was a focus on art, too. When Garfield Weston bought Fortnum & Masons in 1951, he had the foresight to buy art for the store. Every lunchtime he would go down to the dealers in St James's and Mayfair and look for interesting art to put on the walls, which he believed would increase dwell time in a retail environment.

During the second half of my tenure at Fortnums I initiated an art programme every year to coincide with the Frieze art fair in London in October. We would take the entire Fortnum & Mason collection down and replace it with work by a mixture or a singular artist. One year we worked with the Manchester-based collector Frank Cohen to exhibit a number of modern British artists, and another year we featured work by the Chinese artist Zhang Enli, who is represented by Hauser & Wirth. So my segue from Fortnum & Mason into Artfarm was more seamless than one might think.

When did your own love of art begin?

I was bought up in the Kingdom of Fife, just north of Edinburgh on the east coast, where the fishing villages are awash with great Scottish artists. I was always in and around the gallery and artist world, and I would go to London twice a year to see galleries and go to the theatre. I had an ambition to open a gallery when I was 17 – I even saw a property that I thought would make a fantastic gallery – but I was a management trainee at Sainsbury's at the time and the lure of going to London changed that course.

But, 30 years later and working as chief executive of both the gallery Hauser & Wirth and the hospitality group Artfarm, it feels like a very natural world, for me. I have two separate teams for both companies and a good chief executive is largely about providing context for everything we do. I do that for both sets of teams and make sure the dots join up.

Why is art important in hospitality?

The relationship between restaurants and artists dates back hundreds of years. Take the La Colombe d'Or hotel and restaurant in the south of France, where some of the greatest artists in the world left works as a thank you after eating and drinking there. Or Food restaurant in New York City's Soho, which was founded by artists in the 1970s.

At Artfarm we create a very inclusive environment – there's something for everyone, the art lover or the foodie. It's about connoisseurship. People like food, art, wine, music and conversation and you don't go out just for the food, wine or service – it's the sum of the parts that make the experience.

How do your sites differ from others that boast big-name artists on their walls?

Firstly, it's important to say that none of the Artfarm locations are galleries – we don't sell art – but because of Artfarm's relationship with the artist community, we're able to achieve some extraordinary collaborations. A number of restaurants in London have great paintings on the walls, but it's more a transactional relationship between the artist and the establishment. It may be a beautiful piece of work, but it's not connected. The person in London I admire the most for demonstrating the relationship between the artist and the property is Mark Hix. Art wasn't on the walls of his restaurant for decorative purposes – Damien Hirst's ‘Cock and Bull' in Tramshed was much more meaningful because of his relationship with the artist – you wouldn't see a multimillion-pound installation happen in most regular environments.

Our sites the Fife Arms in Braemar and Roth Bar & Grill in Somerset are fantastic examples of hospitality destinations where the environment is infused with art – it makes people want to go and experience the venue for the art just as much as the hospitality. Take Zhang Enli's intervention at the Fife Arms. He was inspired by the experience of the Scottish Highlands and created a very bespoke piece which is on the ceiling. It's not about hanging paintings on the walls, an intervention is an artwork that interacts with a space. You'll also see this in our new project in Mayfair, the Audley, when it opens in the autumn. There will be artworks in the building that will surprise and delight and make people go ‘wow, how is that possible?'. The DNA at Artfarm allows those relationships to happen because art is at the heart of what we do.

Can you tell us more about the Audley?

It's always been an ambition to have an Artfarm project in London, but we never wanted to open something in a very generic building, so we've been on the look out for an interesting space. We've got a partnership with Grosvenor Estate, and not just from a transactional perspective as the landlord, but the ethos and thinking throughout has been done hand-in-hand with Grosvenor.

The Audley is an old Victorian pub that we are in the process of renovating and plan to open in the autumn as a destination restaurant with three floors of ‘curious rooms'. These will be spaces where you can have a pre-booked meeting, a celebratory lunch, or a book or product launch, with the wet-led pub called the Audley Public House downstairs serving beer and wine as well as a great food offer, while the first floor will become Mount St. Restaurant. It's not like anything else and it will reflect Mayfair. Closer to the opening we will reveal the artist interventions.

And what about the food?

We have Jamie Shears, coming from London's 45 Park Lane hotel, who has joined us this month as executive chef. He was born in Torquay and has a wonderful respect and love of British ingredients. He thought the project was not only a phenomenal opportunity to define his cooking in this environment, but that it would provide a lot of creative freedom to bring about his flair of presentation.

What we will do in Mayfair will celebrate classic food from a historical British-London perspective – it's not going to be modern British, but historical food of Mayfair, London and Britain, presented in a relevant way for today, reflecting the authenticity of the area.

So can we expect to see eel pie on the menu?

It could have eel pie, that's a classic London dish, but we would need to make sure it's sustainable. It's about making it into a relevant dish for today. Take scallops with mash and green sauce, that was a great London dish, so there's a lot of creativity with what we can do and Jamie will spend the summer developing menus, sourcing producers and recruiting his team.

What have been the biggest challenges you've faced in your first year at Artfarm?

The number one challenge has been people. Recruitment in our sector is hugely challenging in a post-Brexit and – almost – post-Covid world. We employ 300 people across Artfarm and have 50-60 vacancies. We will soon have to fill 130-140 roles at the Audley, so come autumn if we are fully staffed we will be a team of 500.

Around 40 of our vacancies are in the Highlands and providing accommodation for workers is a problem. I communicate with local councils around housing strategies for rural communities and the tide is turning a bit, but slowly.

The unique thing for us at the Fife Arms is that it's a paradise, so if you are at the right stage of your life, there's no greater place to be than in the middle of the most glorious countryside.

How are you hoping to attract staff to your sites more broadly?

I'm a huge believer in the magic of people. We're a Real Living Wage employer and we put people at the heart of what we do. I think we're an interesting employer of choice, because of those people who want to work in the sector, some want to work in a much more creative environment than the traditional roles of waiter or kitchen porter, so the biggest opportunity we have is our creativity offer.

The Audley, for instance, will I think capture the imagination of a lot of creative people. Many of the silent voices of the brigade are often people from very creative and interesting backgrounds. Someone may come from a village in Italy and have studied art or history – everyone has a story to tell, but they don't always get the ability to express that. Our environment provides intimacy between art and the artist. The artists come and eat, drink and be merry – we have a constant revolving door of artists coming into our properties – and how exciting would it be for a 25-year-old from Spain or Newcastle to be in that environment? That's not happening in a chain restaurant.

Do you think the staffing crisis has improved at all over the last year?

I think recruitment is getting slightly easier. I'm a heavy supporter of Kate Nicholls and everything UKHospitality is doing, and I also want to drive an increase in awareness to make hospitality more of a career choice and support the improvement of working conditions to attract more into the sector.

Also, there's the crisis in Ukraine, and as we open our borders to welcome refugees from Ukraine and elsewhere, the hospitality industry needs to seize this moment and be open-armed and embrace these people with offers to educate and train. It's an opportunity from an employment perspective to say: "Come, be welcome and be a part of our team, we'll support you."

The Artfarm collection

Artfarm was founded in 2014 by the Somerset-based gallerists and art collectors Iwan and Manuela Wirth. The company has six sites to date, with the seventh, the Audley, due to open in Mayfair in London later this year.

Roth Bar & Grill

Opened in 2014, Roth Bar & Grill is based at the Hauser & Wirth gallery in Somerset and features many Hauser & Wirth artists alongside works from the private collection of Iwan and Manuela Wirth, from Henry Moore's drawing of lobster claws to Rodney Graham's lightbox ‘Dinner Break (Salisbury Steak)'.

Durslade Farmhouse

Opened in 2014, the six-bedroom farmhouse in Somerset, on the edge of Bruton, is also located on the site of Hauser & Wirth. The farmhouse was renovated by Argentinian architect Luis Laplace and features unexpected interiors, vintage furniture and artworks from Hauser & Wirth, including a specially commissioned painted mural in the dining room by Guillermo Kuitca and an installation by Pipilotti Rist that projects the Somerset landscaped onto the walls of the sitting room through a chandelier of found objects and glass.

Manuela

Located in downtown Los Angeles, Manuela opened in 2016 to unite chefs, farmers and artists, celebrating seasonal ingredients sourced from the best farms and producers in southern California. The restaurant was designed by Los Angeles native Matt Winter and is illuminated by specially commissioned works from artists Paul McCarthy, Mark Bradford and Raymond Pettibon.

The Fife Arms

Opened in 2018 in Braemar, the property features more than 14,000 pieces of art, including antiques and specially commissioned artwork. These include the painted ceiling ‘Ancient Quartz' by Zhang Enli, a mural by Guillermo Kuitca in the Clunie dining room, ‘Red Deer Chandelier' by Richard Jackson and a Steinway piano that was creatively reimagined by contemporary artist Mark Bradford.

Durslade Farm Shop

Opened in 2020, mid-lockdown, Durslade Farm Shop is a community farm shop with its own in-house forager and butcher.

Roundhill Grange

A grade II-listed Georgian house, located in 200 acres of historic parkland on the outskirts of Bruton. The manor house is used for private parties, corporate events and weddings.

The Audley

Opening autumn 2022. Art interventions to be revealed.

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