Hasta La Ideas

Jay Osgerby has curated 14 designers working with craft to present “thought-provoking” installations based on timely issues for this year’s Collect Open exhibition.

The Collect Open installations are on show as part of the wider international Collect art fair, which is returning to London’s Saatchi Gallery for its 14th edition this year.

While the art fair as a whole showcases “museum-quality” contemporary craft works from around the world, Collect Open focuses on individual makers.

Each of the 14 makers from across the UK have made new works specifically for the fair and are being exhibited there for the first time.

“Collect every year gives us an insight into international craft culture, and for me, Collect Open is one of the most dynamic parts of the fair,” said Osgerby.

“This year I’m pleased to have been part of the team that has chosen the 12 makers and works for 2018, I hope that it’ll prove to be one of the most thought-provoking selections yet.”

Following on from last year’s selector Faye Toogood, Osgerby – from design duo Barber & Osgerby – has chosen the 14 exhibiting artists this year, along with the Crafts Council’s head of exhibitions and collections Annabelle Campbell, and project curator Julia Ravenscroft.

“We look for conceptually strong ideas which show a clear vision and skill in making,” said Ravenscroft. “I am struck this year by the seriousness of some of the themes that have inspired the works. The pollution of our seas, scarcity of clean water, child welfare and the environment are just some of the ideas explored.”

Collect is open to the public from the 22 until 25 February 2018 at the Saatchi Gallery in London’s Sloane Square.

Read on for more information about the 14 works on show.

Harvest by Mella Shaw

Documentary-maker-turned-ceramic artist Mella Shaw combines traditional and digital techniques to make objects and site-specific installations from clay – digitally applying patterns to her objects’ surfaces before firing.

Her Harvest installation is made up of hundreds of handmade, smoke-fired ceramic fish, and ceramic versions of plastic containers – representing the impact of plastic pollution on our oceans and its inhabitants.

Numen by OMA Space

Seoul-based textile studio OMA Space has created a large-scale tapestry installation called Numen – named after the divine energy believed to animate individual objects.

Made from a mixture of handwoven silk, wool, cotton, and hemp, the floating textiles represent the cycle of nature, from birth to death.

Aquatopia by Katrin Spranger

Conceptual jewellery artist and metalsmith Katrin Spranger incorporates natural materials in her work that are in danger of depletion, like crude oil, honey and water, to comment on consumption and the scarcity of resources.

Aquatopia is comprised of a collection of objects associated with water, whose shapes are inspired by piping and plumbing parts made from copper and glass. The pieces also experiment with the use of limescale.

Fallen Women by Alison Lowry

Northern Ireland-based glass artist Alison Lowry draws on her background in textiles to create fabric-like sculptures in glass, using the pâte de verre, or “glass paste”, technique, which sees her combine finely crushed glass with a binding agent, to then cast the mixture in a kiln, where it is fused into a solid form.

Her Fallen Woman installation uses this method to commemorate the women that were confined in Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries – Roman Catholic institutions of confinement – where around 30,000 women were imprisoned between the late-19th and 20th centuries.

A Circle of Porcelain by Sue Paraskeva

Once a maker of functional objects and tableware, Porcelain-worker Sue Paraskeva now creates sculptural installations and performances in a bid to explore the potential of porcelain in communicating meaning.

For Collect Open, Paraskeva has produced a circular installation of 300 thrown vessels, linked with silver wire. The dimensions of the vessels match the weight and measurements of the average human body and have been deliberately damaged in some way to represent the vulnerability of the human condition, while their circular grouping suggests collective strength.

Ersilia by Hannah Robson

Using a combination of loom-weaving and lace-making, RCA graduate Hannah Robson has woven three-dimensional textile structures for her Ersilia installation, inspired by Italian writer Italo Calvino’s story.

The story writes of a city where dwellers would stretch strings from the corners of their houses to establish relationships, in colours corresponding to the type of relationship. When there were so many strings that people could no longer get past them, the inhabitants left, the houses were dismantled, and only the strings would remain.

Elements by Jilly Edwards

Bristol-based tapestry weaver Jilly Edwards has documented the emotions she experienced on a weekly basis for a year in a tapestry, representing them in different colours and textures within 13 sections, each depicting a four-week period.

What Lies Beneath by Jan Hendzel Studio

Jan Hendzel is exhibiting a collection of furniture and vessels for Collect Open, which has been made using both digital techniques and traditional woodworking methods to explore “what lies beneath” the materials.

Table by Juliette Bigley

Classical musician-turned-metalsmith Juliette Bigley created 20 unique tabletop vessels including a wine bottle, a jug, and water glasses, crafted from a mixture of patinated copper, brass, nickel silver and silver.

Her Table installation takes its cues from the idea of domestic ritual, emulating a table at the completion of a meal, when eating is over but the “ritual communion of dining” continues.

The Value of Making by Emily Jo Gibbs

Textile artist Emily Jo Gibbs is presenting a new body of portrait work for Collect Open. Rather than her usual silk organza hand-stitched portraits and still life compositions, she will be depicting various making disciplines through to-scale representations of tools to comment on the social and cultural importance of craft.

The Between by Forest + Found

East London design duo Max Bainbridge and Abigail Booth from Forest + Found use wood, natural pigments, and textiles to create sculptural works, such as standing vessels and pots.

Using traditional, physically demanding methods such as dyeing, scorching and carving, their installation The Between explores the way humans interact with the made object.

Tapestry by Eva Rothschild and West Dean Tapestry Studio

Winner of West Dean Tapestry Studio’s first ever open call commission, Irish sculptor Eva Rothschild was selected from 150 artists who submitted a design or concept to be hand woven by the studio’s weavers in early 2017.

Their Collect Open installation saw Rothschild work with tapestry for the first time, incorporating some of the geometric designs and colours from her What the Eye Wants project into the 1.4 x 2.6-metre tapestry.

Hortus Conclusus by Donna Brennan

London-based fine art jeweller and photographer Donna Brennan has created a series of wearable sculptural art pieces from a mixture of minerals, stones, gold, bronze and silver.

Taking its name from the Latin term for “enclosed garden,” Hortus Conclusus is presented against a backdrop of dye-sublimation floral images printed on aluminium. Brennan extracts parts of these images and incorporates them into her objects, referencing “shakkei” – a Japanese term meaning “borrowed scenery.”

Pipeline by Alison Cooke

Pipeline by London-based ceramic artist Alison Cooke pays tribute to ceramicist Henry Doulton and engineer Joseph Bazalgette who built London’s Victorian sewer system. The work uses clay excavated from the construction of London’s new supersewer, referencing both historic and future design.

The post Jay Osgerby selects 14 designers to create installations for Collect Open craft exhibition appeared first on Dezeen.