For the latest edition of Culturalee in Conversation we spoke to Pascal & Paulina, creative forces behind the magical Adelaide Salon in Hove. In a Regency home by the sea in Hove, where the salt wind carries whispers of distant times, Pauline and Pascal have lit a quiet fire, a flickering flame that echoes across centuries. Back to the gilded salons of Paris. The spirit of the 17th century is reborn, not in powdered wigs or candlelight, but in pigments, performance and sound. A fusion of past and present. Curated with love, rebellion, and a sharp eye for beauty.
The Adelaide Salon is a gathering of wayfarers in the age of digital fog. Where Brighton’s creatives, painters, poets, dancers, and dreamers can converge and immerse themselves in open-hearted dialogue. It is Pauline, the performance conjurer, and Pascal, with design stitched into his soul, who shape these evenings.
A tapestry of sculpture, short films, experimental sonics, poetic murmurs and art that bleeds from canvas and screen. A provocation in velvet gloves, a reminder that creation is not a luxury but a lifeline, a communion. Here, one might sip wine beside a teapot that sings into your ear, or be stilled by the monochrome gaze of clowns, carnival ghosts, and buffoons painted by The Baron Gilvan. The Adelaide Salon is not merely a place, but a pulse of a new creative moment.
What first compelled you to create Adelaide Salon? Was it a response to something you felt was missing in the art world, or more a desire to gather a community around shared curiosity?
The Adelaide Art Salon is a response to the wider world including the Art world. We have both a philosophical and experimental approach. We felt that it was the right time for people to reconnect and explore the Arts in a different way, to embrace diverse mediums, more challenging practices and ideas, in an organic, authentic and more intimate manner that would inspire and provide a space to navigate these troubled times.
Sharing a deep appreciation of all Art forms from visual arts, performance art, film, writing and beyond, we are delighted to gather likeminded souls, some of whom are internationally recognised creatives and thinkers embracing our philosophy and supporting us in our vision.
We wished to channel the progressive energy that Brighton & Hove is famous for and marry it with our own 21st Century interpretation of the early Art Salons from Paris in the 17th to 19th centuries that inspired the ‘Enlightenment’. Fortunately it worked and The Adelaide Salon reflects the zeitgeist of today.
Traditional white-cube galleries can feel rigid or exclusive. Did you consciously set out to reinvent that model, creating something more porous, experimental, and community-focused?
The traditional model of white-cube galleries and Art Fairs have been struggling, with collectors, commentators, and even the gallerists being jaded and left feeling uninspired for quite some time.
Artists have become increasingly disillusioned with the ultra capitalist model of the current Art World and auction houses. The Art World as we now know it, has become more corporate, the galleries too ‘polished’ and sterile, and in turn more detached from real people. We have felt for a long time that there was a need for more challenging and provocative art in many different forms, and a more inviting environment for a more inclusive and diverse socio-economic audience, artists and commentators. The Salon has a ‘philosophy’ where the arts, artists, thinkers and all involved including our patrons are one entity.
The Adelaide Salon weaves painting, sound, performance, and ritual into a constellation rather than a linear program. How do you approach curating such diverse practices so that they resonate together?
This lovely description certainly encapsulates what we set out to achieve. We see linear methodologies as outdated. Our non-linear curatorial and socially engaging approach reflects the thoughts and desires of the artists and our guests. This is our ‘immersive’ approach. It is challenging, and requires the discipline to leave behind the over defined, refined and conformist models, freeing our minds to create and curate.
With immersive works, from The Baron Gilvan’s dreamlike canvases to intimate one-to-one encounters, audiences aren’t passive viewers but participants. How central is this exchange between artist and audience to the vision of Adelaide Salon?
The exchange and engagement between the Artists and the Audience, including ourselves is at the core of our ‘ethos’ and vision for the Adelaide Salon. We see no distance between them. The impact of this exchange has the potential to expand horizons and ultimately influence the way we engage with the wider world. We are already seeing the ‘ripple effect’.
Surrealism suggests that wonder emerges when dream and waking life collide. Do you see Adelaide Salon as continuing that wager, that the marvellous can still erupt in the everyday when art, performance, and community converge?
We strongly believe that the energy created between everyone immersing in the Salon shows the power of art, performance and community and what it can achieve. Life becomes far less ordinary, as the ordinary becomes extraordinary, the audience being collaborators in this weaving of philosophies, painting, sound, performance, and ritual into a magical constellation.
You have collaborated with gallerist (and fellow Hove resident) Maureen Paley on a Salon previously. Do you have any more collabs in the making and are you planning for the Adelaide Salon to travel?
Collaborations are ‘key’ to The Adelaide Salon. The collaboration with Maureen Paley at Morena Di Luna was a truly inspiring event for all of us, and programming more and beyond in the near future. ’
Travel -Indeed! As we have been invited to host The Adelaide Salon in London and Europe, and we look forward to working with many iconic people and venues. Currently we are preparing another special- secret ‘Salon’ in a very special place, to be announced soon. Watch this space!
Sussex has a rich history of the arts, from Glyndeborne to Charleston House, dating back to the Prince Regent constructing the flamboyant Royal Pavilion, through to the Open House season in Brighton every summer. Do you feel that Brighton and Hove are having something of a Renaissance, and that you are at the forefront of that with your reinvention of the Salon concept?
This part of Sussex has this strong history of taking steps others would not, championing progressive ‘philosophy’ and embracing the Arts, such as the Prince Regent and the Charleston set. Our re-invention of the ‘Salon’ concept reflects this progressive, artistic, revolutionary and flamboyant spirit. There is a profound positive cultural shift happening here, with a new ‘web being woven’ with cultural movers and shakers of Brighton & Hove. We are immensely proud to be part of this thread, and the Salon being at the forefront of this current ‘Renaissance’.
Follow The Adelaide Salon here.
Performance art at The Adelaide Salon. Image Courtesy of The Adelaide Salon.
