Dolly pARTon | South Place Hotel, London

As an artist who specialises in poorly rendered portraits of my favourite camp icons, I have “done” Dolly Parton more than once. I have also gifted paintings to some of my top divas when I’ve gone to see them in concert: Liza Minnelli, Barbra Streisand and Miss Parton herself have all been very lucky ladies. I always find it a bit more difficult when I’m painting for the person. I don’t want to insult them, but I also don’t want to compromise my bad art aesthetic. One thing I’m sure of: I never want to personally hand them the thing and see their expression as they try and take it in. I post my gifts to the venue.

I couldn’t help thinking that they might have gone further and tried to make it look a bit like her Tennessee Mountain Home or even her flash-trash Winnebago

So with this process in mind, when I knew I was going to see Dolly, I set to work. Painting done, I assessed it, decided it was too “good” and that I wanted to keep it for myself, and did another one. The piece I gave to Dolly… well, let’s just say that it probably has pride of place in the ‘Arts and Craps Room’ she has at Dollywood to store all of the tons of fan art she gets sent. Painting 1: cute, fun, pretty Dolly. Painting 2: some grand guignol thing, the stuff of nightmares. But where I’d worried I’d upset Liza by mistakenly portraying her mother standing behind her looking a bit like a monkey, I figured that Dolly would appreciate her horrid-yet-hilarious her gift.

We have established: I love Dolly and I love art. So when I discovered that there was an exhibition called Dolly pARTon taking place in London – by a gaggle of Finns, no less! – I took just a hop, skip and a jump over to South Place Hotel to have a mosey round the show. People who know me well might have thought that this was something that I had dreamed. It was real. It happened.

Dolly Pushing Dolly, by Corinna Tomrley

Two years ago when I moved back to London, I would occasionally walk to Liverpool Street Station past some scaffolding, through which rectangular peepholes invited you to look. You didn’t see the construction site, though; instead there were little models of the structure to be: South Place Hotel. I remember thinking it was a great concept – the intrigue and the unexpected made me think of a playful art piece.

When I sat in the Secret Garden of South Place Hotel eating Southern fried chicken from their swanky restaurant, listening to an awesome country music set from their resident DJ, before seeing the Dolly exhibition in the Le Chiffre games room… it all made sense. It may be a bit posh-modern looking from the outside with slick suit-types sipping bubbles under the Moet et Chandon umbrellas, but actually and a bit surprisingly, South Place the experience delivered the tough combo of luxury, fun and art.

Situated between Liverpool Street and Moorgate, the 80-room luxury boutique hotel is the first from restaurant group D&D London (owners of Skylon, Le Pont de la Tour and Bluebird Café). The exteriors are by Allies & Morrison, the interiors by Conran, and throughout it is brimming with art. Good start.

I go to a lot of art exhibitions, in both the large multi-floored famous galleries and the teensy-weensy independent spaces dotted around London. The question that strikes me every time I leave a gallery is “What now?” What do I do with that experience? You’ve moved around the (often cold, white) space, run your eyes over each piece, maybe paused before a couple that particularly grabbed you. You have your reaction to it – perhaps intellectually but usually emotionally too – and then move on. Once you’ve walked out the door, where do you put those thoughts and feelings? If it’s an opening you mostly stand awkwardly, drink in hand, trying to find the words to discuss with strangers what is surrounding you when all you want to do is sit down.

There can never be enough Dolly art in the world, if you ask me

Well, bless my soul if the main art space of South Place Hotel isn’t a chi-chi yet comfy sitting room. Very fitting for Dolly – though I couldn’t help thinking that they might have gone further and tried to make it look a bit like her Tennessee Mountain Home or even her flash-trash Winnebago. Perhaps I want too much out of my Dolly Parton art exhibition. Still, there was really nice lighting and I felt cheered and relaxed, not pressured and bewildered – there certainly wasn’t any of the coldness or intimidating atmosphere of a schmancy gallery. I’ll be interested to see how other exhibitions fit in to the space and whether they blend into the background as Hotel Art, or catch the eye and inspire conversation.

This time – whether it was down to the spirit of Dolly, the wonderful art pieces, the wine – I was moved throughout. I loved every artist’s interpretation of Ms Parton, from Mari Kasurinen’s My Little Dolly pony sculpture and Fiona Timantti’s knitted wig, to Sami Viljanto’s painted glass screen and Suvi Aarnio’s embroidered triptych. I wiped a tear from my eye, I guffawed, I slapped my knee. And I grabbed the artists afterwards to gab and say a big ole THANK YOU! There can never be enough Dolly art in the world, if you ask me.

I spoke with Sampo Marjomaa, one of the artists behind the show, who told me that the exhibition had just come from the Klaus K Hotel in Helsinki and would next be heading off to Berlin to gussy up the 25 Hours Hotel. Sampo said he’d been criticised by some in the art world for holding the exhibition in “commercial” hotels. Considering the market-driven forces of the contemporary art scene, this seemed a tad hypocritical to me. Hotels are spaces full of people who may not have particularly come to see art, but they can experience it nonetheless. And in a setting that has seats.

I feel a bit spoiled now, though. I’ll be expecting all art shows to come with chicken, country music and wonderful Finns chatting to me about Dolly Parton’s cosmetic surgery. C

South Place Hotel, 3 South Place, London EC2
002-3403 0000; southplacehotel.com

Corinna Tomrley is a London-based artist who specialises in celebrity portraiture of camp icons. Also a filmmaker, her latest project is the experimental documentary For The Love Of Judy: The journey into the queer, camp legend of Miss Garland