Coutts Cowley Manor Arts Award
Cowley Manor, the Cotswolds, May 3rd to September 30th
If you want to escape from the city, Cowley Manor near Cheltenham is the place to stay, just a 70-mile, easy, scenic drive from London. With 30 modern rooms set in 55 acres of land, it is more a funky, contemporary stately home than a stuffy, ‘olde-worlde’ country hotel. Grand but welcoming, stylish without the swagger, Cowley has got the balance just right.
The restaurant, headed by Matthew Cuthbert who trained alongside Marco Pierre White and Heston Blumenthal, serves wholesome, punchy food using fresh ingredients sourced locally. C-Side Spa, voted Best Spa in a UK Hotel by the Condé Nast Traveller Readers Awards, has two stunning slate pools, four treatment rooms and a fully kitted-out gym with a personal trainer on site. There’s a snazzy Billiards Room with sumptuous leather padded walls and The Village Shop, a Vogue-endorsed boutique, is stocked with the latest designer gear from Heidi Klein to Anya Hindmarch, and everything in between. The hotel even supplies guests with Wellies so walking is always an option if, or when, the weather is unkind.
Its remarkable Grade II listed gardens set Cowley above its competitors and if the sun is shining, there is no better place to be, amid natural springs, a series of lakes and rocky Victorian cascades. The views are spectacular and over the next few months, guests, visitors and picnic-goers will be able to enjoy an alfresco sculpture exhibition too because Cowley and private bank Coutts have teamed up to create the Coutts Cowley Manor Arts Award, a unique experimental sculpture competition for postgraduate students from the Royal College of Art in Kensington. Celebrating its 175th anniversary this year, the RCA is the world’s most influential postgraduate art and design school with a glittering list of alumni including David Hockney, Christopher Bailey and Tracey Emin.
“Having the opportunity to work with Coutts and Cowley Manor has been a fantastic experience for our students,” says Steve Bunn, sculpture tutor at the RCA. “Site-specific art like this is a great way to showcase the work of some very talented young artists.” There were 27 submissions in total, of which eight have been awarded funding to bring their concepts to life, on display in the Cowley grounds until the end of September. A prestigious panel of artists, collectors and entrepreneurs, including Mat Collishaw, Patrice De Villiers, Millicent Wilner (director of the Gagosian Gallery London) and Peter and Jessica Frankopan, founders of A Curious Group of Hotels (of which Cowley Manor is one), judged the competition.
The works of the eight finalists come in all shapes and sizes. “Frolic-Romp- Mount” by Lauren Kelly consists of three brightly coloured, spiky balls with phallic undertones. “My work investigates the power of the fetish, the anthropomorphic and hints at organic and bodily properties,” she says. Ben Fowler has created a “Tornado”, made from spiralled steel and polyurethane tube that hovers over a murky lake: the industrial structure stands in stark contrast to the leafy background, but it works. Cradeaux Alexander has taken a more philosophical approach, creating an edition of ten brass plaques to signpost the landscape – “A Lake of Unparalleled Kindness”, “A Path of Unusual Morals” – and these are easier to miss than some of the more obvious sculptures but just as effective.
The winner, announced on 2 May, was Wonwoo Lee with his sculpture “HEY”. A former graduate of the BFA Hong-ik University in Seoul, Lee has created an enormous, three metre high, steel sign. Sandwiched between the overgrown trees, the in-your-face letters sing out, cheekily, from all perspectives. “My artistic practice is one that plays with both the physical things that surround us and the mental perceptions of our behaviour in the world.” His work will now take up permanent residence in the grounds and all the sculptures (apart from Lee’s) are for sale, with proceeds going to the emerging artists.
Cowley Manor, now in its tenth year, has long supported emerging British talent; already decked out with original works of art, jazzy textiles and quirky furniture, including papier-maché David Farrer animal heads from the Rebecca Hossack Gallery, contemporary-cool sculptures have now been added to the line-up.
Photographs by Amy Murrell
From the Kensington & Chelsea Magazine, July 2012.
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