“Walking into a gallery that’s an echoey white room can be an intimidating experience,” says Debra Finn. “I don’t think it’s the best way to see new art.” And she speaks from experience. The home she shares with husband Mark and their children Lorcan, 12, and Ariana, 9, is a converted watermill full of unexpected nooks, with creaky stairs and comfy sofas. But several times a year, the stuff of family life – abandoned PE kit bags, chewed dog toys – gets tidied away and the house opens as a gallery.
“The atmosphere is very easygoing,” says Debra. “It’s our home, so if someone isn’t taken by a painting, they can drift off to another room or chat to us about the house – it’s not all about the art. But, if they do like a piece, it’s easier for them to see how it works in a real home instead of in a blank white space.”
The couple moved here from south London, where Debra co-founded the art and design gallery Cavaliero Finn in 2004 with artist Juliana Cavaliero. “At the gallery we only represent art that we genuinely love and would have in our own homes, so at-home exhibitions seemed the logical next step,” says Debra.
The roster includes creative knitter Melanie Porter, ceramicists Sophie Cook and Rhian Malin, and painters Gill Rocca and Tony Beaver – many of whom were talent-spotted at the start of their careers (Cavaliero Finn championed ceramicist Ali Miller long before Benedict Cumberbatch sipped from her porcelain tea cups in Sherlock). These days, designer-makers such as the Galvin Brothers tend to approach Debra and Juliana – because what better place to display creations that are part artwork, part furniture than in a home setting?
The Caveliero half of the gallery has stayed put in Herne Hill, but nine years ago Debra and Mark succumbed to the itch to move out. “Mark grew up in rural Ireland and we wanted the kids to have a similar upbringing,” she explains. The watermill’s setting is “properly rural”, at the end of a rutted, high-hedged lane. On show days, art aficionados traverse its twists and turns, praying they don’t meet a tractor coming the other way. “One driver arrived slightly shaken and needed hot, sweet tea,” says Debra. “He feared for his shiny paintwork.”
The house’s architecture is a mellow version of rustic: yes, there are stone walls, chunky beams, flagstones and woodburners, but the contemporary art ensures there’s no hint of olde worlde here. The exposed mill workings add industrial grit, although Debra drapes the wheels in garlands of LED lights: “It’s not just decorative – it’s to stop visitors stumbling into them after a few glasses of wine,” she says.
Gothic shutters, a find from nearby Glastonbury Reclamation, add to the air of unexpected pleasures: delicate ceramics by Mizuyo Yamashita nestle on a table under the staircase and painter Catherine Knight’s landscape casts a subtle mood over the living room.
Debra and Mark arrived well before the Hauser & Wirth gallery opened its Somerset outpost in 2014, but they do feel the ripples of what Debra calls “the Bruton effect”. “There are more creative people here than ever, producing work that is on a par with art in London and other cities,” Debra says.
Not that it’s all arty types: “At a recent party, the conversation turned to extracting bulls’ semen – nothing about house prices or schools. We’re definitely not in south London any more.”
Yet this outpost of contemporary art amid arable land is not completely off the beaten track. “At our last show, a Japanese collector turned up on foot,” says Debra. “She was determined to see a particular artist, so got a train from London and then a local bus to the end of the lane. She knocked on the door, beaming with pleasure that she’d found us. That was when I knew that this idea was going to work.”
For more information, go to cavalierofinn.com
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