The Pink Bear Room at Home House brings together two distinct expressions of LUAP's practice within the historic Georgian townhouse in London's Portman Square. Developed in collaboration with A Space For Art, the project began with an exhibition of unique Prints from The Journey (2016), before expanding into I ♥ Day Dreaming (2017), an 8 × 5 m Mural commissioned for the Gloucester Lounge. Together, the works trace the movement of LUAP's visual language between Photography, Printmaking and architectural Painting.
Both works emerge from The Hero's Journey, a series in which The Pink Bear enters the wooded landscapes of LUAP's earlier Lone Soldiers series. Through repetition, variation and changes in scale, familiar imagery assumes different physical and spatial relationships with the viewer. The intimacy of the individual Print gives way to the immersive presence of the Mural, extending the psychological landscapes of the original work into a space occupied as part of everyday life.
The Hero's Journey marked a transition in LUAP's practice, introducing The Pink Bear into landscapes previously explored without a human figure. In Lone Soldiers, isolated and damaged trees had become a means of examining psychological experience, their physical forms reflecting states of disconnection and uncertainty. The arrival of The Pink Bear introduced an alter ego through which these environments could be inhabited rather than observed from a distance. The figure did not resolve the tensions present in the earlier work, but provided another way of navigating them.
The Journey develops this visual language through a series of unique Acrylic and Screen Prints on Somerset White Satin Paper. Produced as an edition of thirty with three artist's proofs, the works combine the repeatability of the printed image with individual painterly interventions. Each retains a relationship to the same underlying composition while existing as a distinct artwork. Presented together at Home House, the series allows repetition and difference to operate simultaneously, reflecting LUAP's interest in the ways experience and perception can alter our understanding of familiar subjects.
The subsequent commission, I ♥ Day Dreaming, extends this investigation through a change in medium and scale. Drawn from an early photograph of The Pink Bear seated within the branches of a tree, the composition returns to a recurring setting in LUAP's work, where the forest operates as both a physical environment and an extension of psychological experience. The figure occupies an elevated position within the landscape, removed from the activity below. Its apparent solitude is accompanied by a sense of imaginative possibility, suggesting a space in which observation, reflection and daydreaming converge.
Executed directly onto the wall in Acrylic and Aerosol, the Mural translates the original photographic image into an expansive painted composition. Expressive areas of colour, layered marks and contrasting linework establish a visual language distinct from the precision of the photograph. At eight metres wide and five metres high, the work moves beyond the conventional proportions of an individual Painting, requiring the viewer to encounter the image in relation to the surrounding architecture. The scale changes not only the physical presence of The Pink Bear, but the distance from which the work can be experienced.
The Georgian architecture of Home House introduces a further relationship between the contemporary image and its setting. The decorative character of the Gloucester Lounge remains visible alongside the Mural, establishing a contrast between the historical interior and LUAP's expressive approach to Painting. Unlike the framed Prints, which retain their independence as individual objects, I ♥ Day Dreaming becomes inseparable from the architectural surface. The work occupies a position between Painting and permanent intervention, changing the character of the room without attempting to imitate its existing decorative language.
The Mural was developed directly on site, using scaffolding to construct the composition across the full height of the wall, with assistance from artist DDRegalo. Its production required LUAP to adapt a process ordinarily undertaken within the studio to the physical conditions of an existing interior. The commission followed the presentation of The Journey, which remained on exhibition at Home House for more than nine months. The relationship between the temporary works and the permanent Mural established an ongoing presence for LUAP's practice within the building, with the Gloucester Lounge subsequently becoming known as The Pink Bear Room.
