Art break hotel

You have to admit, it's a good premise for an exhibition: work by seven artists has been carefully positioned around the newly Conran-ised Great Eastern Hotel for three weekends only.

Visitors, equipped with a map, go stumbling into restaurants and knocking on bedroom doors to piece together the show. Aesthetic delectation is thus matched by the frisson of snooping around a posh hotel.

Of course, I anticipated problems too: would the work just be consumed by this Habitat haven? And would any of it be remotely "disturbing", as the title had promised?

The Great Eastern's über-chic minimalism accommodates some of the work with ease: Gavin Turk's sculpture and Ben Spiers kitsch realist portraits of celebrities (Peter Purves, Daniella West-brook et al) provide plausibly ironic decoration for the lobby and GE club. But they're substantially more appealing than the vacuously tasteful black and white photography that officially graces each hotel room.

Other artists' work disrupts more effectively, like Runa Islam's videos of chambermaids running riot in room 158. The TV set by the bed catches you off guard with its silent footage of a maid staring at you through an open door.

But the show's highlight is room 104, by Franko B. This artist is renowned for his masochistic blood-letting performances; happily he's not here in person (although the brave can reach him on a mobile phone number advertised in neon in the atrium). Neatly positioned on the coffee tables and in the bedside cupboards are a number of resin blocks in which are sealed a selection of grubby erotic accessories: a novel, a Eurostar ticket, pornography, used condoms, a chain, a stethoscope, phials of God knows what illicit liquid - and (in true Franko B style) syringes, scalpels and blood-spattered cloth.

Only this work really got to grips with what makes hotels so alienating yet erotic. These resin blocks are everywhere: beneath the cushions of the sofa, in the bath and (best of all) under the crisp white duvet. Making the inhumanly pristine humanly filthy - that's the real pleasure of staying in pricey hotels.

This is an ambitious show that depends heavily on its spectacular surrounds for effect - but the combination is well worth checking out.

Great Eastern Hotel, Liverpool St, EC2. Saturday-Sunday 10am-5pm, 7-8 April. Tel: 020 7618 5000.