- Minor Attractions 2026
- 13th – 17th October
- The Newman, London
A Place to Rest took part in Minor Attractions 2026 as one of three recipients of the inaugural Major Futures award. The presentation featured a newly commissioned work by Chantal Goulder, 'In passing' , and the UK debut of Michael Sandford’s video piece, 'A Break in the Weather', as part of the Minor Attractions film programme.
Chantal Goulder, In passing, 2026
50-57 Newman Street became The Newman Hotel in February, having stood empty for the ten plus years since the multi-storey building was vacated by its long-term commercial occupants. During this period, a string of unrealised hotel and residential development schemes would be proposed to the council, ending eventually in a 2018 authorisation for the demolition and redevelopment of the site. Trawling back through the Google Street View captures, the previous building disappears abruptly in November 2020, with construction hoarding up through to April 2023 when a new structural carcass appears; the skeletal beginnings of its as-yet undocumented present.
One of this series of council proposals can be found online in the form of a planning permission document submitted to the City of Westminster in 2015. A few lines stand out in a section titled ‘Operational Management Plan’, which outlines the requirements for the future employees. Firstly, “the entrance will be attended at all times by door staff”, and then, more intently, “A dedicated staff entrance would be on Berners Mews. Servicing will take place on Berners Mews in a dedicated off street delivery bay and would be restricted to the hours of 07.00 and 18.00 daily”. The presumably standardised language is, not unexpectedly, succinct. It manages to unsettle, even so; embedding in the building permission itself, the requirement that some staff activity, some movement of bodies, must always be kept hidden.
Today, the hotel staff are preparing for an event on Level -1 of The Newman. Tables and chairs are being set up in what is usually a conference room, but this morning it will be used for dining. A waiter with a wired ear piece connected to a walkie-talkie on her trousers is setting up a glass cabinet of croissants next to a stack of menus and an open laptop. A colleague approaches her, flustered because her ear piece keeps falling out of her ear. It must be an important event. They manage to arrange it together, weaving the wire through her hair to hold it in place. They step a few feet away from each other to test out the audio channels, saying, “Hello, can you hear me?”, “Hello…hello?”. The guests start to arrive, a few families and sets of couples descending the spiral staircase from the lobby. One of the fathers asks why they are dining down here this morning, and their waiter tells them there is an important event in the main restaurant.
Chantal Goulder’s In passing settles in the shadowy zone under the stairs, where the makeshift breakfast service opposite has now finished, the temporary furniture packed up and taken away. What remains is a stark, whitewashed board, reflected in the mirrored doors to the conference room. Two figures creep out of its surface. They step past each other tentatively, barely there, as if applied to the surface and half rubbed-off. Rows of numbered circles embedded in the display light up intermittently. One that had been holding still slowly pads off, as another pads on nearby, unexpected. The signals occur too often to respond to with any kind of action, but change with the measured cadence of a call that has been answered. The bell hop hat of one of the figures is cast aglow, a hand holding a suitcase or a bow on the back of a pinafore. Coming together they form a scene of characters that know their parts well, belong to a fine-tuned operation. Few words are shared as they pass each other in the corridor.
And yet, staying in front of the board for longer, the image of a careful daily service starts to wobble. The pace of the changing lights becomes hypnotic. They flick on and off, on and off, uncountable numbers of guests that need to be attended to. Into the cool placidity of the space down here, creeps the suggestion that there are demands being made upstairs that cannot be satisfied. Bodies persistently called to order and governed by a building and its temporary occupants. The board itself is merely for show, a representation of reassurance with a tongue in its cheek that tasks are being taken care of. These figures are only legible in outline. Somewhere else, and there is no need to imagine it, duties are fulfilled that are not meant to be seen. The planning permission has already specified some of its terms: a dedicated staff entrance, servicing restricted to the hours of 07.00 and 18.00 daily.
Michael Sandford, A Break in the Weather, 2026
Michael Sandford’s A Break in the Weather was recorded on location in the southern highlands of Sri Lanka and progresses through a series of static shots of a vast rainforest. High above the village where the artist’s mother grew up, a Sinhalese voiceover by his great-uncle speaks of a radio tower amidst the overgrowth that has been co-opted by a local woman. With the arrival of a dense mist, the forest gradually descends into a disorienting static. Taking loss and disorientation as one, the work questions the stability of the boundaries that separate us from the objects of our grief.