Each year, champagne maison Ruinart emphasises the second part of its name by inviting a different contemporary artist to contribute to its ongoing Carte Blanche project. The artist is invited to soak up the atmosphere of the crayères – ancient chalk cellars where Ruinart’s champagne is aged – and ponder the exchange between human and nature in the vineyards of the Montagne de Reims region of the denomination.

This year, the fragile status of that anthropocene relationship prompted Ruinart to invite not one but six artists from around the world to conduct Conversations with Nature. Drawn from five continents, the artists invited for this Carte Blanche project embody both contemporary art and different ways environmental issues are perceived around the world. Andrea Bowers is based in Los Angeles; Marcus Coates and Thijs Biersteker live in Europe; Pascale Marthine Tayou works between Belgium and Cameroon; Henrique Oliveira has studios in London and São Paulo; and Tomoko Sauvage travels between Paris and Tokyo.

Ruinart Carte Blanche – Henrique Oliveria ©Ilya Kagan

As in previous years, Frieze London (9-13 October) provides a great opportunity to catch some of the artworks. The Ruinart Bar will play host to Carte Blanche works created by two of the six artists, Oliveira and Coates.

Ruinart Carte Blanche Artist Henrique Oliveira ©Alice Jacquemin

However, Maison Ruinart recently unveiled a permanent home for the art it has commissioned: a new biodiverse Artists’ Garden at its home in Reims. The artworks will be joined by the Nicolas Ruinart Pavilion, designed by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto: a new mineral construction that slots into a natural, plant-filled environment entirely redesigned by landscape architect Christophe Gautrand. This landscape will offer an experience that reflects the maison’s different facets, from the age-old network of underground chalk pits to the vision of nature and contemporary creation that is the Carte Blanche series.

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