The ancient and the erotic inspire Sessions Art Club’s Frieze London 2025 pop-up

It’s no secret that food feeds Jonny Gent’s art, just as art fuels his appetite for hospitality. For the painter, creative director of Cabin Studio, and founder of Sessions Arts Club – a Clerkenwell restaurant that’s also an exhibition and performance space – both worlds are full of rituals: of theatre, restraint, and desire. ‘I think food should hum beneath the skin, like a good painting,’ he tells Wallpaper*.

Much like Gent himself, his Clerkenwell restaurant is ever-restless, periodically reimagined by artists and designers, and, since last year, no longer bound by the historic walls of its home in Sessions House, a former courthouse. Its first foray beyond what was once a judges’ dining room came at Frieze London 2024, where the team created a discreet refuge from the fair’s frenzy. The pop-up concept took its cue from the reverse of an artist’s canvas: walls draped in untreated cotton that diffused the light in soft, painterly tones, layered with floral shadow installations by Hattie Fox. The collaboration between Gent, architect Russell Potter of Soda Studio, and Richard J McConkey of A Studio Between was a study in texture, intimacy and suspended time.

For 2025, Sessions Art Club (SAC) returns to Frieze London with a new mise-en-scène: a dining space that sits somewhere between confessional and stage set. Potter, McConkey and Gent reunite to create an environment shaped by cinematic light and tactile form inspired by the primal surfaces of France’s Lascaux caves (the site of prehistoric paintings), and the stylised tension of Paul Verhoeven’s 1992 movie Basic Instinct. The film’s singular blue-lit interrogation scene becomes a visual leitmotif, refracted through shifting shadows and glowing table surfaces that pulse between natural and artificial illumination.

Cut-out objects from Gent and sculptural forms are interspersed with Hattie Fox’s botanical interventions, a surreal echo of cave flora. Guests enter to find a bar framed by a bold architectural façade, which acts as a display, with others stretching across the rear and side walls. In the kitchen, chef Abigail Hill’s menu channels the same sense of seasonal beauty and studied nonchalance found on the permanent Sessions Arts Club site, equally suited to a fleeting mid-fair interlude or a languid, post-gallery lunch. Expect Carlingford oysters, Cobble Lane fennel salami, Jerusalem artichoke risotto, and goat’s curd with rainbow chard.

As with the 2024 edition, the pop-up features limited-edition objects and collaborations: six one-off Tekla bags embroidered with Gent’s handwriting and quotes from Basic Instinct and philosopher Alan Watts; SAC at Frieze posters; Lost Wines Vols 1-3; graphic T-shirts by Mans Ericson of Every Night Studios; Completedworks objects; Drake’s x SAC x Cabin Studio caps; and other pieces that are half art, half artefacts.

Here, we catch up with Jonny Gent to celebrate the opening of the Sessions Art Club at Frieze London 2025.

Sessions Art Club pops up at Frieze London 2025

Wallpaper*: Sessions Arts Club blurs the lines between restaurant and art installation. How does this Frieze iteration push that idea further?

Jonny Gent: I love to explore the intersections of human complication, memory, sensuality and space. Here, I wanted the dining room to feel as urgent as a gallery, buried beneath the white noise of the fair. A room not curated, but conjured; light falling like a brushstroke. You walk in and you’re not sure if you should sit down or just stand very still and listen.

W*: How can dining, as a medium, sit alongside contemporary art – is it about aesthetics, ritual, or something more primal?

JG: It’s all of it. Food and dining have always been art, ritual and theatre, but also elegance, restraint, and desire. A table can (should) be a canvas, a confession booth, or a stage. The act of eating is ancient and deeply sensual.

W*: The pop-up is within the Frieze fairground; how easy is it to find?

JG: We’ve kept it discreet and a little hidden. The entrance is quiet; you might miss it. Then, suddenly, you’re inside something that feels cinematic, tender, and slightly charged – a hush in the middle of the noise.

W*: What kind of conversations or moments do you hope will unfold in this space during Frieze London 2025?

JG: Private ones. The unexpected. Silences. I love the moment after a glass of wine has tipped over. We hope it invites people to slow down. To breathe and behave differently. To feel, even briefly, transported. Just being sexy is also fine.

W*: What was the initial spark for the design? And how was that idea interpreted through space, light, and form?

JG: I was drawn to spaces that feel both ancient and modern, yet also charged – both sensual and sacred. We began with shadows and light, not objects. Then we considered warmth and that cool Michael Mann blue as a memory. Rooms you half-remember from childhood or desire. Next, we searched for them in materials through our collaborators. I like to strip things back to their bones. The remaining elements evoke something else: a cave, a chapel, an interrogation room, a motel at dusk.

W*: Why were you particularly drawn towards sources such as prehistoric caves and Basic Instinct? How did they translate into the space?

JG: Caves were the first galleries. Flickering walls marked by hand, blood, or smoke. Basic Instinct is just another kind of cave. One speaks to ritual, the other to seduction. I wanted the space to hold both ends of that thread: the ancient and the erotic.

W*: What’s your favourite detail in the space? Something guests might miss unless they’re really looking.

JG: My favourite would be a cut-out shape inspired by my painting of the Barry Kieselstein-Cord jewellery piece that Catherine (Sharon Stone) wears in Basic Instinct. I was fascinated by this piece and its heavy shape. It reminds me of some of the early animal cave paintings. This piece appears in the space, but it’s not easy to spot.

W*: How does Abigail Hill’s menu echo or respond to the environment you’ve created?

JG: Abigail’s food is both restrained and elemental. She cooks with intuition and memory. The menu feels aligned with the space: seasonal, textural, quietly intense. Nothing is superfluous. Everything matters.

W*: Could you share more about the objects available for purchase?

JG: This definitely wasn’t about merchandise. They’re artefacts; limited pieces with an almost archaeological delivery. Ashtrays, vases, glass, stone, linen, cotton, paper – all made slightly off, slightly surreal.

The making process of these objects was of great interest, how that fitted into the studio practice of Cabin Studio and especially the desire to create this cave-like space. The highlight was getting to spend time with Anna and Grace from Completedworks, Jung from Drake’s, Charlie from Tekla, and Mans from Everynight studio. Listening to their thoughts and ideas. This is the beauty of the collaborative exercise.

The Sessions Arts Club at Frieze pop-up is open to all Frieze London ticket holders from 15 to 19 October 2025