Discover some of our favourite art acquisitions of 2023

2023 was a big year for Soho House: we celebrated 20 years in North America, hosted two Soho Summit events and opened Houses in Mexico City and Bangkok. But it was an exciting year for another reason, too – our growing art collection.
 
As every House has a carefully curated art display of its own, each new opening brings new works, artists and perspectives into our collection. ‘This year was the first opportunity to exhibit work from Latin America with the opening of Soho House Mexico City, which has one of our most significant new collections to date,’ says Kate Bryan, Soho House Global Director of Art. ‘We didn’t feel we could really call our collection “global” without any work from this incredibly rich and diverse art scene. With São Paulo coming soon, it’s wonderful to see the Latin American art community bring a whole new dimension to what we have already acquired.’
 
Over those 12 months, Bryan’s team was also busy taking stock of our existing assemblage, which includes more than 8,000 works on permanent display. ‘In October, we launched art maps for every House in the world on the Soho House app,’ Bryan says. ‘With support from Porsche, we’ve also begun the exciting journey to print these maps and make them available in the Houses. We have 10 so far, with lots more in the pipeline. This is just the beginning of making our extraordinary collection accessible in new ways to members.’
 
Scroll on to discover 13 of the most special additions to the Soho House collection from the past year.

Yinka Ilori, ‘Beacon of Dreams’, 2023
Soho Visionaries powered by Porsche
Soho Farmhouse
 
As part of our Soho Visionaries series, created in partnership with Porsche, Yinka Ilori created Beacon of Dreams, a site-specific artwork for Soho Farmhouse. The monolithic sculpture sits in the grounds of our House in rural Oxfordshire, and was designed to create a space for people to reflect, meditate and pause among nature. The shell-like structure is split down the middle, inviting viewers in to experience its kaleidoscopic colours and exploration of childhood memories, mindfulness and joy.
 
Bernat Daviu, ‘Visca la Vida! (Fidel)’, 2023
Soho Visionaries powered by Porsche
Soho House Barcelona
 
Spanish artist Daviu produced this large-scale artwork in oils as part of his ongoing series Painted Shadows Of External Elements To The Painting That Affect Their Meaning. The painting features the shadow of a Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolet, paying homage to Daviu's former gallerist, Fidel Balaguer, who would drive to the gallery and park his car inside.

Nicole Wermers, ‘Attachments (Digest)’, 2023
Soho Visionaries powered by Porsche
Soho House Berlin
 
This photographic collage by Turner-prize nominated artist Wermers, is now part of the permanent collection in our Berlin House. The work features numerous photographs of bicycle locks taken in various cities – shot and laid out by the artist herself – to reflect the social, emotional, and economical complexity of city living. 

Pannaphan Yodmanee, ceiling commission, 2023
Soho House Bangkok
Curated by our Senior Art Collections Manager, Sara Terzi, the art collection at Soho House Bangkok includes the work of 33 artists born or based in Thailand, and reflects the diversity of the country’s contemporary art scene. This site-specific artwork by Pannaphan Yodmanee, placed in the atrium’s vaulted ceiling, blends nature motifs and memento mori in striking blue.
 
Jose Dávila, ‘The Fact Of Constantly Returning To The Same Point Or Situation’, 2022
Soho House Mexico City
When Soho House Mexico City opened its doors to members in September, the team was aware of the importance of highlighting local talent. ‘We focused on artists born, based or trained in Mexico, and especially the people who had long-term relationships with the city,’ says Anakena Paddon, Soho House Art Collection Manager. For this work, Mexican artist Jose Dávila interprets grand modernist ideas which can be traced back to Luis Barragán and Mathias Goeritz, and interrogates their possibilities within today’s visual language.

Judy Chicago, ‘Birth Trinity’, 1985 
Soho House West Hollywood
In 2023, Soho House West Hollywood received a new, refreshed art collection to reflect the stellar rise of the LA art scene over the past two decades. A work by the iconic American feminist artist Judy Chicago was one of the key additions to the collection. Spanning several decades, her art examines the role of women in history and culture, while her educational work laid the foundation for feminist art and art education during the 1970s.

Mandy El-Sayegh, ‘Operations (Orchard)’, 2023
White City House
One of White City House’s latest additions is a large-scale painting by Mandy El-Sayegh. Born in Malaysia and based in London, she explores material and language: her works often feature newsprint, advertisements (as seen in the painting in our collection), aerial maps, anatomy books, and her father’s calligraphy. El-Sayegh also uses hand-painted elements and non-traditional materials, such as latex. This allows her to move between material, corporeal and linguistic frameworks.

Catherine Opie, ‘Untitled #4 (From Your Shore To My Shore)’, 2009
Soho House New York
To mark two decades of Soho House in North America, in 2023, Soho House New York’s art collection was refreshed. As our first-ever US club, the Meatpacking District outpost now truly reflects the spirit of New York’s buzzing art scene. One of the key new additions was a piece by renowned artist and photographer Catherine Opie. ‘We have two of her portraits in the collection, but this is the first time we’ve acquired one of her landscapes,’ says Bryan. ‘This is a beautiful seascape that looks like an abstract painting.’

Zhivago Duncan, commission, 2022
Soho House Mexico City
One of the biggest considerations when curating the collection at Soho House Mexico City was the House’s scale. ‘In the main restaurant, we have three key pieces by Abraham Cruzvillegas, Ana Segovia and Zhivago Duncan. Here, we had the opportunity to play with more than three metres of height, and almost the same width, so we didn’t have the limits with space that we sometimes have elsewhere,’ says Paddon. Duncan’s works are not only expansive, but also intricate and unique in their materiality and texture, playing with the eternal questions of the origins of sentient life and the universality of consciousness.
 
Mark Corfield-Moore, ‘In Our Garden’, 2023
Soho House 40 Greek Street
This year, our first-ever House saw the addition of a piece by artist Mark Corfield-Moore, whose paintings are strongly influenced by the tradition of woven textiles. Through looking at textiles as transient objects, he interrogates his mixed Thai and British heritage, playing with contemporary iconography, humour, and textural history.
 
Rene Matić, ‘Paul And Zac In The Garden, Peterborough’, 2022
High Road House
In 2023, High Road House’s collection was given a refresh, with new works exploring the diverse interpretation of art history’s key themes: the figure, still life and landscape. Rene Matić’s work falls into ‘the figure collection, which explores how artists treat the body as a subject matter,’ explains Jack Lazenby, Soho House Art Collections Assistant Manager, who curated the collection. ‘It was incredibly interesting to put together. It involved established artists, like Sir Peter Blake, alongside emerging artists that I really love, such as Matić. The piece is a photograph of their father, providing a very intimate examination of ideas of masculinity and the body.’

Anousha Payne, commission, 2023
Electric House
The refreshed art collection for London’s Electric House was curated by Soho House’s Senior Art Collections Manager, Sara Terzi. In her curatorial vision for the refresh, Terzi took inspiration from an existing work in the collection – ‘The Outline’, by Julian Opie – which depicts a bold dancing figure and is a longstanding favourite for the House’s members. Inspired by this, Anousha Payne was invited to paint four large-scale canvases for the Dining Room featuring mysterious characters in elongated forms – an expansion of her ongoing fascination with storytelling and Indian folklore.
 
Jules de Balincourt, commission, 2021
Soho House New York
As part of the refreshed collection at Soho House New York, inspired by its connection to the city’s creative scene, the Vinyl Room now features a painting by Jules de Balincourt. The French-born, American contemporary artist is based in Brooklyn and is best known for his abstract, atmospheric paintings, with saturated colours blurring the line between fantasy and reality. The painting is an immersive moonlit cityscape in blue tones – an extraordinary example of playing with a sense of space and emotion.
 
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