Kalai Gallery Curates Art, Cocktails And Contemporary Culture at The Ivy Asia For Frieze Week

Frieze Week has long provided London with an opportunity to experience art beyond the conventional gallery setting, bringing together collectors, artists and creative communities across the city. This year, Kalai Gallery extended that conversation into hospitality with an exhibition and cocktail evening at The Ivy Asia St Paul’s, introducing guests to a selection of contemporary artists through an experience that connected visual art with flavour, design and social exchange. The gathering also offered an introduction to the restaurant’s new private events and dining space, where its distinctive interiors provided an atmospheric setting for an evening that blurred the boundaries between cultural programming and hospitality.

The choice of venue was particularly fitting. The Ivy Asia St Paul’s has introduced a private space designed to accommodate everything from intimate gatherings to brand activations and larger celebrations, with capacity for up to 50 seated guests or 100 standing. Its lacquered red interiors, gilded Buddha statues, ornate chandeliers and Japanese inspired artwork create an environment that is already visually expressive. During Frieze Week, those design details became part of the wider experience, providing a richly coloured backdrop against which Kalai Gallery’s presentation of contemporary art could be encountered in a more social setting.

The exhibition brought together five artists represented by Kalai Gallery: Adeseke, Ore Adedeji, Claudia Koh, Venetta Nicole and Ishwarya Ravi. Their work spans distinct approaches to contemporary art, from Adeseke’s texture rich paintings exploring African womanhood and identity to Koh’s examination of memory, intimacy and the relationship between nature and urban environments. Ravi, meanwhile, works through abstract expressionism, using layered marks, colour and gestural movement to communicate emotion and spirituality. The exhibition’s strength lay in bringing these different perspectives into a shared environment, allowing guests to encounter the artists through both their work and the conversations taking place around it.

The evening’s cocktail menu extended this relationship between art and sensory experience, with individual drinks named after the artists and paired with flavour combinations intended to translate elements of their creative practices into something guests could taste. Adeseke’s A Blue Moment combined Ketel One vodka, mango, hot honey, fig leaf and cucumber. The sweetness of mango and honey, balanced by cucumber’s freshness and the green, aromatic quality of fig leaf, creates a layered profile that suggests a meeting between warmth and tranquillity. The cocktail’s name invites thoughts of colour and atmosphere, offering a sensory counterpart to Adeseke’s emotionally expressive approach to painting. Ore Adedeji’s Love Can Bloom, made with Ketel One, Lillet Rosé, cherry blossom, lychee and lime, took a more floral direction. Delicate blossom and lychee sweetness meet the brightness of lime, creating a lighter, more romantic composition that reflects the suggestion of growth and tenderness contained in its title.

Claudia Koh’s Rainbow brought together mango, passion fruit, custard and Prosecco, combining tropical acidity with creamy sweetness and sparkling wine. Its contrast of textures and flavours gives the drink a playful, almost dessert like character, while the title suggests the colour and shifting emotional registers associated with Koh’s explorations of identity, memory and carefully constructed environments. Venetta Nicole’s Soft Resistance took a more complex route, pairing Tanqueray No. TEN gin with pandan, sweet vermouth, chocolate and Campari. The bitterness of Campari and the depth of vermouth provide structure, while chocolate introduces richness and pandan brings an aromatic, subtly sweet quality. That tension between contrasting elements makes the cocktail an apt interpretation of its title, suggesting softness that retains its own character and strength. Ishwarya Ravi’s Mind Games completed the selection with yuzu, elderflower, mint, sake and sparkling wine. Citrus sharpness, floral sweetness, fresh mint and effervescence create a profile that moves between clarity and complexity, echoing the emotional ambiguity and movement that can be found in abstract expressionism. The five cocktails made the menu an extension of the exhibition’s creative language, giving each artist a distinct flavour identity.

The evening brought together a considered mix of art buyers, auctioneers and passionate art lovers, creating a strong connection to the art world and encouraging conversations between people with different perspectives on collecting, discovering and experiencing art. The atmosphere was complemented by a tasty array of canapés that flowed through the room throughout the evening, with the food and drinks adding another layer to the experience. Between conversations around the artists’ work, introductions and exchanges over cocktails, the gathering captured Kalai Gallery’s approach to making art more accessible through shared experiences and new connections.

The collaboration demonstrated the potential of Kalai Gallery’s nomadic approach to exhibition making. Instead of relying solely on a permanent gallery space, the platform brings art into hotels, restaurants and other environments where new audiences can encounter it in a different context. The model reflects Kalai Gallery’s wider ambition to make the luxury art world more inclusive while championing diverse voices and the connections between visual art, fashion and music. Its previous collaborations, including an exhibition with The Hoxton in Southwark, demonstrate how this approach can create opportunities for artists to reach audiences beyond the traditional gallery circuit.

At The Ivy Asia St Paul’s, that philosophy found a particularly fitting expression during one of the busiest weeks in London's art calendar. By combining an exhibition with a cocktail menu designed around the artists, Kalai Gallery created an experience in which art could be encountered through conversation, taste and the atmosphere of the room, without losing sight of the individual practices behind it. The evening also offered a glimpse of the possibilities presented by the restaurant’s new private events space, where food, drink, design and cultural programming can work together. As Frieze Week continues to encourage new ways of experiencing contemporary art, Kalai Gallery’s collaboration offered a reminder that the gallery experience need not be confined to four walls: it can travel, adapt and find new audiences wherever culture and hospitality meet.