Meet The Artist: Claire Luxton At The Mayfair Townhouse

A new exhibition showcasing six works by renowned British artist Claire Luxton is launching at The Mayfair Townhouse, running for the whole of October in The Dandy Bar on the hotel’s ground floor. Utilising the multi-disciplinary artist’s signature and distinctive self-portrait mode, The Modern Muse is made up of six powerful works drawing on women’s roles across history and mythology – think sirens and succubi to Medusa and Lilith.

Luxton’s work combines photography and digital painting to produce vivid, often luminescent self-portraits restyling the artist with different clothing, hair and scenarios, all masterminded and created in the artist’s East Sussex studio (which she describes as ‘a very random cornucopia of things,’ including wigs, dead ducks, seashells and a prosthetic human heart). ‘My work always has underlying tones of nature, beauty standards and the female experience,’ Luxton tells C&TH. ‘But one of the things that has specifically formed these artworks is the historical roles women have been cast in. We are the sirens luring men to their deaths. We are witches. We are the ‘old crone’. You’re a slut, you’re a virgin, you’re all of these things – all these roles we didn’t want for ourselves but for hundreds of years have been cast into.’

Luxton – the creative mind behind Country & Town House’s unforgettable July/August ‘23 cover – is famed for her self-portraiture, creating an uncanny vista as six Claires watch from The Mayfair Townhouse’s walls. Across the series – which is made up of ‘Just A Squeeze’, ‘How Does Your Garden Grow?’, ‘The Poet’s Wife’, ‘Red Herring’, ‘Unravel’ and ‘S.W.A.L.K’ – we see six different hairstyles and colours for Luxton’s alternative selves. ‘Hair is so deeply tied to identity, authority and hierarchy, especially if you go back and look through history,’ the artist explains. ‘Even now, hair is incredibly important to people’s identity.’ This along with ‘beauty, fragility, strength, disruption and creation’ are all built into the female experience Luxton presents.

The Poet’s Wife by Claire Luxton (2024)

Luxton also accompanies each of her works with a poem, and The Modern Muse at The Mayfair Townhouse is no different. ‘Sometimes the poem comes first, sometimes the concept for the portrait comes first,’ Luxton says. ‘Sometimes I work on them at the same time and they evolve together.’ General manager Paul Rafferty says the team is ‘thrilled’ to be working with Luxton on the exhibition, with The Mayfair Townhouse taking Luxton’s vision one step further by offering a paired cocktail masterminded by the hotel’s mixologist Ricardo Morillo. ‘Ricardo has an incredible talent for creating liquid art, so Claire’s pieces – full of rich symbolism and botanical elements – provided the perfect inspiration for him to create something really special and bring another sensory element to life,’ Rafferty says.

A member of the Iconic Luxury Hotels family, The Mayfair Townhouse honours London’s dandyism history, packed with whimsical art despite masquerading as a residential townhouse just off Piccadilly. But while Luxton certainly creates arresting art – ‘I like to give people that instant feeling of comfort because the image is beautiful or colourful so they are drawn in,’ she explains – the subtext is often more sinister than it is whimsical. When prodded on the tonal contrast, Rafferty said: ‘Claire’s work is absolutely perfect for us, actually. She takes these classical mythological stories – sirens, Medusa, Lilith – and completely reimagines them through a contemporary female lens. It’s bold, it’s theatrical, and it’s got an incredible depth that really speaks to our aesthetic.

‘There’s a shared spirit, too,’ Rafferty adds. ‘Just like we’ve taken from the whole dandy era – Oscar Wilde and Cecil Beaton – Claire’s work takes something classical and historical, giving it a fresh, modern twist. We think the collection flows beautifully with our existing pieces, adding new layers of storytelling throughout the hotel, which is exactly what we hoped for.’

Claire Luxton: ‘We are the sirens luring men to their deaths. We are witches. We are the ‘old crone’… All these roles we didn’t want for ourselves but for hundreds of years have been cast into.’

The first of the six works is the lemon-yellow ‘Just A Squeeze’, and ‘part of me feels that the artworks get a little bit darker as you work around the exhibition,’ Luxton says, adding the cocktails work in the same way. ‘We end up at Whiskey by the time you get to “S.W.A.L.K”. The level of alcohol goes up as the topics get I get a little bit bleaker.’ That final portrait shows a black-haired figure with pale skin and red heart-painted lips like the Queen of Hearts, with a corset-like ribbon criss-crossing the face.

Combined with the sinister settings Luxton casts herself into, is this unsettling for the artist to see? ‘I’m quite detached from them being me,’ she tells us. ‘I just use myself as a vehicle because I think it’s much easier for me to put myself in an uncomfortable position and perhaps make something that I feel is honest and vulnerable, as opposed to having to direct someone else in the narrative I’m trying to explore.’

In fact, using her own face of the canvas ‘allows me to tap into things,’ Luxton says, adding: ‘I think making these works makes me more sensitive to the topics, because I’m thinking about them all the time.’ Claire notes the historical research she delves into for each work, describing the process as ‘mini therapy’.

Red Herring by Claire Luxton (2023)

‘It would be harder to explain these characters and these personas to a model,’ Luxton adds, noting following all of that research, setting up the scene, and doing her hair and make-up, she takes around 3,000 images before trawling through them to find the perfect shot.

Are there any themes Luxton isn’t quite finished with? ‘I never really feel finished with anything. I always feel like I’m just scratching the surface. I’m never quite satisfied,’ Luxton says. ‘But I always see that as a positive thing for an artist.’

The artist is particularly fascinated with the sexism that has become so ingrained in society: ‘I’m a massive fan of the Tudors,’ she says. ‘But even back then, Queen Elizabeth I knew, to be able to have the reign that she had, she couldn’t take a husband. That feels so modern! She knew that if she really wanted to be taken seriously and to have that role, she couldn’t be seen as beautiful or as a sexual object, she had to be a stern figure. But why? Why can’t we be both? I like putting on makeup and wearing something nice, but why does that mean I’m not intellectual? I get so frustrated by that. There are so many stigmas tied to our age, careers, motherhood and all different things. That’s something I want to dig into more.’

The Modern Muse will be displayed in The Dandy Bar at The Mayfair Townhouse.

At The Mayfair Townhouse, Luxton hopes visitors ‘go on a journey’. ‘My hope is that they are surprised by how I’ve curated The Modern Muse around the space, and that perhaps the longer they sit with the pieces and consider how they  interact with each other narratively as you go around the room, that they leave with more questions than they came with.’

As for those cocktail pairings, it’s all part of a desire to ‘continue to establish The Mayfair Townhouse as more than just a hotel, but an artistic destination in itself,’ Rafferty says, acknowledging that ‘Mayfair has always been London’s artistic heart’.

‘This partnership is perfect because it’s not just about having beautiful things on the walls, it’s about creating incredible immersive experiences for our guests at every turn,’ Rafferty adds.

As for where to start, the mixologist himself recommends we beeline to Just a Squeeze, Luxton’s lemon-yellow self-portrait where an innocuous braid becomes a sinister noose. ‘I love the way Claire captures tension and release, light, colour, and texture held in a single moment,’ mixologist Morillo tells us. ‘That energy became the spark for my cocktail of the same name, bright, citrus-led and playful. It’s the perfect expression of the collaboration: fresh, vibrant, and elegantly layered, designed to mirror the piece’s zestiness.’

How To See It

Guests of The Mayfair Townhouse and visitors alike can see The Modern Muse at The Dandy Bar throughout October, you just need to book a table.

Address: The Mayfair Townhouse, 27-41 Half Moon St, London W1J 7BG

BOOK IT

If you miss it, Claire Luxton’s work will also be displayed in Paris this autumn: from 12–23 November at the 10th edition of Objectif Femmes, backed by France’s Culture Ministry.