Beneath the Surface of Vranken-Pommery
Image credit: Installation view, Luka Fineisen, Awakening, 2021. Garden Area of The Domaine Vranken-Pommery, 2025
Australia holds a special place for Vranken-Pommery, not just as a thriving market but as a mirror of the Maison’s character. As Madame Nathalie Vranken says, “you’re joyful people,” and I must say we do love Champagne!
When Vranken speaks about Pommery, she is not talking about champagne in isolation but about people, imagination and time. Sitting in Melbourne on her fifteenth visit to Australia, she is decisive, a person who builds worlds by paying attention to detail. “I’m not coming for the beautiful place,” she says, smiling. “I have come for the company we have built here, to thank the people for the incredible work they're doing.”
Pommery, a Maison born of a bold vision and rooted in creativity. In the 19th century, Madame Louise Pommery transformed the vast Gallo-Roman chalk quarries beneath Reims into cellars that nurtured her pioneering brut champagne. Those same underground spaces now form the beating heart of one of Europe’s most extraordinary cultural projects: EXPERIENCE POMMERY, a series of exhibitions inviting contemporary artists to respond to the geological and emotional landscape of the space. Since its inception in 2003, more than 500 artists have filled those chalk galleries with light, sound and imagination. The latest edition, Mélodies en Sous-Sol, curated by Fabrice Bousteau, transforms the subterranean cathedrals into a living score of resonant encounters between art, sound and stone.
For over 20 years, artists have delved into this project with ambition and curiosity. However, Vraken does not see the passing of time as leading to the project’s evolution but as a journey. “It’s like a never-ending story. A book where each year writes a new chapter. If you want to know the answer to the entire story, you need to understand each chapter.”
The cellars themselves dictate the terms of creation. “The rules are made by the place. The place is underground. It’s 98 humidity, 10 degrees temperature.” Significantly different to a standard museum levels. Therefore, they cannot borrow any artwork for the project; everything must be produced for the space. “It gives me a different relationship with the artist. A different moment in their production and in their artistic journey.”
That difference is felt immediately in Mélodies en Sous-Sol. Above ground, in the Domaine’s gardens, visitors are welcomed by a fantastical assembly of works that set the tone for what lies below. Michelin-starred chef Alain Passard’s Fouet is a monumental kitchen whisk that catches the wind and “beats the sky,” a playful nod to the craft and rhythm of both cooking and champagne-making. Nearby. Jean-François Fourtou’s towering vegetable-headed figures, the Nanitos and Maxitos, hover between humour and surrealism, guardians of the descent.
Below the surface, the exhibition becomes meditative, tactile, and sonorous. The descent into the crayères is a descent into another tempo, a place where sound softens, and colour takes on a physical weight. Anne-Charlotte Finel’s Sol captures the shimmering light of prehistoric caves in Périgord Noir, filmed by torchlight so that calcite surfaces pulse like constellations. Nearby, street artist @Encoreunestp fills an entire gallery with hundreds of mechanised butterflies that flutter and sing according to mathematical sequences based on π, a delirious portrait of human emotion turned algorithmic rhythm. Korean artist Nam Tchun-Mo’s Spring translates musical notation into sculptural space – fifteen modules of red resin and fibreglass that seem to vibrate in mid-air, a score materialised.
Image credit: Installation view, Anne-Charlotte Finel, Respir, 2022 and Sol, 2023. Experience #18, Cellars, The Domaine Vranken-Pommery, 2025. @ENCOREUNESTP, #papillonsdansleventre (Avoir des papillons dans le ventre), 2024. Experience #18, Cellars, The Domaine Vranken-Pommery, 2025.
Every work carries the resonance of its environment. The humidity, the scent of earth, and the constant 10 degrees all contribute to an atmosphere of otherworldly stillness. For Vranken, art’s value lies not in ownership but in experience, in what remains invisible yet unforgettable.
But this is not the centre of the universe for the visitor. “They came to discover a House of Champagne, to taste and to understand the story… and then you have the exhibition.” Often, she says, visitors are surprised to find art underground. When visitors ask why, a lot of people say “because Madam loves art”, and although this also runs true, there is more to it than that. “It's there to if you want, so you can question yourself. But if you don't, you don't. It's not an obligation. It's a gift.”
That gift, of looking, listening, and feeling, is at the core of her philosophy. “It’s the gift of being able to look at something that you will never have seen if you didn’t come to that place,” she says. “It’s the gift because it’s included; you don’t pay for it. And it’s a gift, because if you find something that touches you, brings you emotion. You will keep that memory forever.”
Her approach to patronage is humble, unpretentious and intuitive. “I’m not a teacher. I’m not a preacher, I’m just giving. Because when you like it, when you learn it, when you want, you open your eyes. And when you open your eyes, you open your mind.”
That belief extends naturally into Pommery’s new role as the official champagne partner of the Sydney Opera House, a collaboration uniting two icons of design and sound. “You want to know why?” she laughs. “The first one is one of the most impressive architectural monuments on earth. For me, it's as much as the Eiffel Tower… I think everyone knows the Sydney Opera House.” Her affection is genuine and specific. “It's a tiny place. It's very small, but it's very impactful.”
Image credit: Madame Nathalie Vranken with Opera House CEO Louise Herron AM.
This is all true, however, there is something closer to who she is that shines through. As she reflects on her life, “What will I miss? Music,” she admits. She has gone out of her way to connect with many art forms, but music has slipped by her. “That's why I'm the partner of a lot of museums…But I will miss music. That's why I was so proud to become the partner of the Opera.”
In the cellars of Reims, sound and silence are inseparable. Every vibration travels through chalk; every breath becomes part of the composition. Mélodies en Sous-Sol captures this sensation – a space where art, music and champagne share the same rhythm, rising slowly, effervescently, toward light. “When you open your eyes, you open your mind,” Vranken says softly. “You are a different person.”
Beneath the earth, amid stillness and stone, that transformation feels inevitable, a melody carried upward in bubbles and time.
