It's funny how circumstances and events can conspire to bring your life full circle, as if the fates takes you back to certain places to complete unfinished business. I experienced this sense of déjà vu recently in the form of a wonderful commission which brought me back to the site of a former haunt. Sitting at the top of one of Bayswater's main thoroughfares is The Whiteley. The Grade II listed building created by architects John Belcher and John James Jonas is the grand old dame of Queensway, designed in the ‘Grand Manner’ of the Edwardian era, boasting a pillared frontage, glazed arcades, with domes and cupolas to decorate the roof. The Whiteleys department store as it was formerly known has stood majestically at this spot since 1911. It is named after William Whiteley (1831-1907), a trader who owned a series of drapers shops along Westbourne Grove in Bayswater before commissioning the current Edwardian era building. In a strange twist of fate William Whiteley was murdered in 1907 by Horace George Rayner, who claimed to be his illegitimate son, "Cecil Whiteley". The business was then taken over by Whiteley's two legitimate sons. Whiteleys was the first department store in London, and was at the time claimed to be the largest shop in the world with the Lord Mayor of London and thousands of people attending its opening. Described as ‘the most beautiful store in the United Kingdom’, and ‘perfect in every detail of Architecture, Equipment, and Service’’, Whiteleys promised potential customers that they could buy everything from ‘a pin to an elephant’. Whiteleys was the height of luxury at the time, including both a theatre and – on the roof – a golf course and it was mentioned in the novels of P. G. Wodehouse as a place to shop in splendour and style. Whiteleys is also mentioned in the book The Diary of a Nobody written by the brothers George and Weedon Grossmith, published in June 1892. and in George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play Pygmalion, where Eliza Dolittle is sent "to Whiteleys to be attired, as well as cited as the "common knowledge" location to buy a woman's dress in the 1964 film My Fair Lady. Whiteleys has since served as the backdrop to other numerous film and television scenes, most notably the film Closer (2004), starring Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen. During the Second World War Whiteleys suffered extensive bomb damage from an air raid on 19 October 1940. Sadly the air raid damage, along with a series of earlier fires and subsequent changes in ownership, led to the loss of many of the department stores archives. In the 1950s Whiteleys chairman Sir Sydney Harold Gillet announced that the store was too big for its turnover, and converted the upper floors of the building into office space. The department store closed down in 1981, remaining empty until the building was purchased by a firm called the Whiteleys Partnership in 1986 reconstruction followed; the façade and some interior features such as stairs and railings remained, but essentially the building was demolished and rebuilt. Whiteleys reopened on 26 July 1989 as a shopping centre. This period is when my association with what was the Whiteleys that I knew and remember well began, as I would visit on a weekly basis for shopping and exhibiting. I loved going to Tower Records there in search of music, and I also had my art exhibited on what was now the largely vacant third floor space used for occasional art exhibitions and would also spend time invigilating exhibitions in the space. In September 2013, the centre was purchased by Meyer Bergman, and subsequently in December 2018, Whiteleys closed for redevelopment in parallel with Meyer Bergman's regeneration of Queensway Parade. The plans for the revamp included a luxury complex featuring 139 high-end residences, the UK's first Six Senses Hotel and Spa, with various restaurants whilst retaining the buildings Grade II listed façade, domes and cupolas re-imagining the venue as a premier, sustainable residential and lifestyle hub. I would pass the boarded up building occasionally as it underwent the building work and was excited to see that it was no lesser talent than Lord Norman Foster + Partners who was given the responsibility of undertaking the renovations, preserving the best of the fabric of the Grade II listed building yet modernising it and making it suitable for 21st Century use. I thought that my association with the building had ended, yet some thirty years later fate intervened during the tail end of the restoration and I was contacted completely out of the blue and accepted a commission to provide a butterfly-themed artwork to be a permanent installation in the foyer of the new The Whiteley Six Senses hotel and spa. It felt really strange retracing my steps, going back in time, but also stepping into the future, entering the building again amid strict security, getting a privileged behind the scenes pre-opening glimpse of the newly reconfigured building. It was disorientating as I remembered Marks and Spencers, Whittards of Chelsea and Tower Records previously occupying the space now taken up by the new hotel. All traces of the former occupants were now just memories, all physical traces now long gone. The space was still a building site and much was still shrouded in plastic sheets, but I could see that the original grand sweeping staircase had thankfully been retained and was shown a table with a central well which was to house my artwork. At the initial meeting with the Six Senses team I was asked to create a range of ideas based around butterflies and moths specific to the British Isles to be installed into the well of the specially designed custom built table which would be covered with glass and used as a conversation piece around which visitors could sit and enjoy drinks etc. I was told about the Six Senses ethos of using only sustainable materials and local artists for their hotels and also how they fund local projects that support wildlife and their ecosystems. I went away and did some research before presenting the team with ideas based around the shape of the British Isles and also abstracted themes of migration and movement which I continue to explore in my work. A final design was agreed upon using strictly paper resources with no plastics, in line with Six Senses sustainable policies. I would use a combination of gold-leafed butterflies as well as several from my collection of spotty ben-day dot papers. I began to cut the distinctive butterfly silhouettes from native British species such as the Comma, Peacock, Red Admiral, Common Blue, Eyed Hawk Moth and Jersey tiger, arranging them into the agreed design for maximum impact. On an appointed day I went into the space and began the two day install and met the owners of the hotel - a lovely husband and wife team - the manager and several other workers in the space curious to see what I was up to as I set to work arranging and then gluing the butterflies into place. It was a little odd working with an audience, as I usually work in solitude but, the staff there were so lovely and accommodating. I was really surprised to engage with one of the hotel workers from Colombia in a conversation about Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927-2014), who made a connection between my work and the similarities and significance of the yellow butterflies from scenes in his celebrated novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (previously on this blog here). This commission was an amazing opportunity for life to come full circle, extending my personal ongoing interaction with this amazing building and becoming a permanent part of the Whiteley's legacy and history. A huge thank you to Maria, Pin and the Six Senses team for organising this.
Six Senses Spa/The Whiteley
The Whiteley London
149 Queensway
London
W2 4BJ
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