A Curated Stay by James Dillon and Space Eclectic

The gathering of Bath's art community.

12/08/26

A Curated Stay

On the evening of Thursday 30th April, the doors of The Francis Hotel opened a little wider than usual. What followed was the kind of evening that reminds you why hospitality and art belong in the same conversation, and why Bath's creative community, when gathered, is something worth celebrating properly.

The occasion was A Curated Stay, an exhibition born from our ongoing partnership with James Dillon and the team at Space Eclectic. James has been a familiar presence in these Georgian townhouses for some time now. Arriving first as a guest of Emberwood, spending evenings in our spaces, understanding the character of our rooms before deciding what should hang on our walls. The exhibition was the natural culmination of that relationship: original artworks placed throughout our rooms and public spaces, experienced not as a gallery visit but as part of the fabric of the hotel itself.

The Collection

The works on display that evening drew from modern British and European artists alongside selected mid-century and earlier pieces, a range that felt entirely at home within seven Georgian townhouses on Queen Square. Roy Osbourne's bold canvases anchored the ground floor, their colour and scale doing exactly what art in a hotel should do: stopping people mid-conversation, making them look properly. Elsewhere, quieter pieces invited closer attention—smaller works, earlier in date, carrying the kind of accumulated significance that takes decades to develop.

The Turnout

The evening exceeded every expectation we held for it. The response from Bath's creative and business community was extraordinary, and the rooms filled with exactly the kind of people these spaces deserve.

SOMER joined us, as did Thomas Fortiman, Yarrow Comms and the Bath BID team, their presence a reminder of how deeply connected the city's independent community has become. Fellow curators made the journey from across the South West and from London, recognising in James Dillon's work something worth seeing in person. Familiar faces from Bath's arts and hospitality world moved through the rooms, drinks in hand, pausing in front of pieces, asking questions, having conversations that drifted naturally from the art to the hotel to the city to what might come next.

Drinks flowed. Canapés from Emberwood circulated with the care that Emberwood always brings. Our snug has been waiting for an evening like this. And our ground floor was transformed by Roy Osbourne's work through to Picasso and Al Libby making a guest appearance. Emberwood fell into a modern yet nostalgic something. Between brasserie and gallery a new concept of restaurant scene awoke.

Why we work with locals

A Curated Stay wasn't simply an art event held at a hotel. It was a statement about what our investment has created and what the Francis Hotel believes hospitality can be. Rooted in the community around it, responsive to the creative life of the city and generous with its spaces in ways that extend beyond the day to day operations. We brought life back to the word hospitality in a time that needs it most.

James Dillon and Space Eclectic have given our walls something that couldn't have been sourced through an interior design brief. They've given them stories, provenance, the kind of presence that accumulates over time and reveals itself differently to different guests.

A couple checking in for the weekend who pause in front of a Roy Osbourne piece and ask where it came from. A solo traveller who sits in the lounge noticing a mid-century work they want to know more about. These are the moments a curated hotel creates, quietly, without announcement.

The evening of 30th April made those possibilities visible and public. It brought together the people who make Bath a city worth noting as your next escape. As a place to eat, to stay, to create, and it did so within our townhouses, on our walls, around our tables.

Every piece displayed as part of A Curated Stay is available to purchase through Space Eclectic. For those who experienced the exhibition and found something that stayed with them, James Dillon and his team are the right people to speak to. Art that has already lived somewhere beautiful tends to carry that with it.

This was the first chapter. The partnership with Space Eclectic continues, the collection will evolve, and the walls of the Francis Hotel will keep telling the story of British art in a Georgian setting on Queen Square.

We are grateful to everyone who came on 30th April. To the neighbours who walked across the square. To the curators who travelled from London and the South West. To the Bath BID team, to SOMER, to Thomas Fortiman, to everyone who made the evening what it was.