Guardian Unlimited- The men and women (or, let’s face it, largely men) who are making fantastic fortunes working in hedge funds are often credited with tickling the art market up to its current giddy heights. So there’s a pleasing neatness in the idea of an artist being commissioned to turn his scrutiny on to the “hedgies” themselves.
Adam Dant was commissioned, appropriately enough, by Spear’s Wealth Management Survey (a quarterly magazine aimed at that special breed of humans known as high-net-worths) to document the professional lives of the mysterious creatures who, behind closed doors in Mayfair and St James’s, engage in abstruse activities such as short-selling and leverage.
Dant, whose studio is on the fringes of the City of London in Shoreditch, spent six months in offices in the financial world – in particular taking a rare look inside the HQs of hedge funds, which have acquired a formidable reputation for secrecy.
He spent time, in particular, in the office of Clareville Capital, based in Westminster. Though his resulting works are an amalgam of a number of offices, his piece The Art of Hedge, showing a cutaway of a Georgian house on the fictitious Hedge Row, draws extensively on the sketches he made at Clareville, which is chaired by former Tory treasurer Lord Marland.
Dant, whose manner in the drawings is broadly Hogarthian, made visual inventories of the sort of items – and people – inside such offices. He also spent time following the hedge-fund managers around their chosen haunts – “though, alas, I never got invited on anyone’s yacht”.
He saw the hedgies disport themselves at Annabel’s nightclub and private gambling establishments such as Crockford’s in Curzon Street and the nearby Aspinall’s, founded by John Aspinall, perhaps most famous as a chum of Lord Lucan. He saw them quaff cocktails at Harry’s Bar on Mount Street, and buy up art at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and the best contemporary art galleries. “It’s a very small world,” said Dant. “They buy art from White Cube, because it’s a reputable name. If you buy your shotgun from Purdey and have your shoes bought in Jermyn Street, you buy your art from White Cube.”
