The Pink Bear Room at Home House

The commission follows an extended exhibition of LUAP’s work at Home House. Originally planned for six months, the exhibition remained in place for more than nine, leading to an invitation to create a permanent work for the Gloucester Lounge.

The source image comes from a pivotal point in the development of LUAP’s practice. In the earlier Lone Soldiers series, solitary and damaged trees became stand-ins for psychological states, while wallpaper patterns from LUAP’s childhood home introduced another layer of memory. After therapy, The Pink Bear emerged from a childhood memory and began to enter that same landscape.

In these early works, something associated with comfort and childhood is placed among the stark trees of Lone Soldiers. The shift does not abandon the earlier concerns around isolation, vulnerability and psychology. Instead, it changes their emotional register, introducing imagination, connection and the possibility of renewal.

In I ♥ Day Dreaming, The Pink Bear sits high in the branches of a tree, removed from the ground and absorbed in the surrounding landscape. The image retains the solitude of the earlier tree works, but the presence of The Pink Bear changes how that solitude is read.

Painted directly onto the wall in Acrylic and Aerosol, the eight-metre-wide Mural brings the photograph into direct contact with the Gloucester Lounge’s ornate Georgian interior. Loose areas of green and blue and black linework sit against decorative plasterwork, mouldings and traditional furnishings, allowing the Contemporary work to alter the character of the room without disguising its architecture.

Working at this scale also changes the physical process of making the image. LUAP paints from scaffolding across the height of the wall.

“I’m not a massive fan of heights, so it took me a while to get used to dangling off the scaffolding platform to paint. By the end of the first day I had no problem with the height, and now I’m on the hunt for an even bigger wall.”

The commission has quickly developed an identity of its own within Home House. Members and staff now refer to the Gloucester Lounge as The Pink Bear Room, giving the artwork a place within the everyday life of the club rather than treating it simply as a temporary display.

The project is realised with Home House and A Space For Art, which develops art programmes for hotels, restaurants, private members’ clubs and interior spaces. DDRegalo assists LUAP during the making of the Mural.