Roth Bar is more than just a bar – housed within Hauser & Wirth’s Threshing Barn in Bruton, Somerset, it wouldn’t look out of place in Shoreditch – it’s a fully functioning, site-specific artwork designed specially to mark the 10th anniversary of its opening. It’s the brainchild of artist Oddur Roth, grandson of the late German-born Swiss artist Dieter Roth, who lived and worked in Bruton for a few months in the early part of 2024. The bar is a dynamic installation, inspired by the history of its home, Durslade Farm, and crafted out of salvaged materials and objects procured from reclamation yards in the surrounding area. First conceived by Dieter Roth in the 1980s, the bar continues the Roths’ cross-generational practice.
Roth Bar is an integral part of the overall gallery experience at Hauser & Wirth, a pioneering art gallery of worldwide repute which occupies a former farmstead in the medieval market town of Bruton between Frome and Yeovil. But before you get the beer goggles on, venture outside into the verdant Oudolf Field – a large perennial meadow behind the gallery buildings – and cast your eyes over the horizon where an alien spacecraft seems to have landed. Joking aside, it’s a thing of beauty and is, in fact, the Radić Pavilion, designed by Chilean architect Smiljan Radić, which, in its former life, sat in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in 2014.
The drinks offering here, billed as a “vibrant, informal celebration of Somerset and the West Country”, means you can while away many a relaxed hour – either propped up at its quirky bar or alfresco in better weather – working your way through its signatures (starting out with Somerset Crusta, a divine concoction of Somerset cider, 5-year-old brandy, lemon and Somerset Pomona) and classic cocktails (Farm Shop negroni all the way for me). There is also wine from the bar’s own vineyard as well as cider (you’re in Somerset after all) from its orchards, and Bristol-brewed craft beer from Lost and Grounded. In the meantime, teetotallers are supremely well catered for, with juices and cordials plied with ingredients freshly picked from the property’s walled garden. And what’s a bar without snacks? Fear not, there are plenty of sharing platters, pastries and sweets to mop up the excesses.
The bar displays video monitors as part of the art installation, which stream footage of its previous versions – Roth Bar has many past iterations from far afield glitzy locations such as St Moritz, Reykjavik and Basel – as well as musical instruments, carpentry offcuts and kitsch ephemera. According to the owners, ‘It is a place where art becomes infused with life, bringing into question the relationship between its function and its status as an artwork.’
Roth Bar is open Wednesday-Sunday, 10am-11pm. Durslade Farm, Dropping Lane, Bruton BA10 0NL; rothbar.co.uk
Lee Osborne is creative director of Secret Trips. Lee spent a decade as creative director of Condé Nast Traveller before setting up his own luxury content studio specialising in travel, fashion and lifestyle
