Lady of the Grapes London Bridge is Carole Bryon's second restaurant after Covent Garden. It sits in the Grade II-listed Menier Chocolate Factory, with a French bistro upstairs and Forbidden Fruit, a candlelit wine bar, in the vaults below. Its 400+ wines are made only by women winemakers. So, we chose three women artists whose work shares an interest in transformation and rich, handmade surfaces.
Emma de Polnay
Emma is a former film and TV set designer. She builds textured, theatrical works from beach finds gathered on the Sussex coast, finished with iridescent pigments. Liminal, a meditation on in-between spaces, hangs above the stairs down to Forbidden Fruit.
Ewa Podles
Ewa is a Polish-born painter, muralist and interior designer, and a Rosemary & Co Award winner. Her surrealist portraits of women begin as paintings, which she reworks digitally, prints and hand-finishes with gold leaf, so each is unique. Beyond the Horizon of Dreams and Cocoon hang upstairs, and Fire hangs in the bar below.
Olivia Bouzyk
Olivia is a London printmaker and Camberwell MA graduate who has shown at the Saatchi Gallery. She makes bold abstract monoprints inspired by medieval illuminated manuscripts, and each one is one of a kind. Six custom-framed works fill Forbidden Fruit, led by 4 Women, where vivid green forms sit on a translucent red ground.
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