Collect is reviewed on behalf of craftscotland by Dale Idiens.

Collect, the international art fair for contemporary objects, launched in 2004 by the Crafts Council and now in its fourth year, gives every impression of being an established event. Of the forty three galleries exhibiting, the majority have participated before, suggesting that sales have been good enough to justify returning.

More than half these galleries are from outside Britain, with exceptionally strong representation from the Netherlands, which had seven stands, and from further afield two from Australia and one from the USA. Interestingly, the twenty stands representing British galleries comprised eleven from London and nine from elsewhere, demonstrating the strength of local interest in high quality crafts in this country. Many of the British galleries were international in their selection of artists, one of the most engaging, Kate Jones of London, presenting a wonderful range of Japanese metalwork and fibre arts.

Collect shows in three of the V&A’s ground floor temporary exhibition galleries, a substantial space, but with forty three stands installed, a maze-like experience results. The work covered a wide range, but the overall impression given was that ceramics and glass were the areas most strongly represented: six stands focused solely on ceramics, including Heidelberg’s Galerie Marianne Heller which was devoted entirely to an impressive group of work by Rupert Spira; and four stands showed only glass, among them Dan Klein Associates at Adrian Sassoon with a knowledgeable selection for Four Decades of Glass Graduates from the Royal College of Art. Jewellery and metalwork were strongly represented, followed by textiles and fibre arts, and lastly, furniture. Indeed, apart from a few individual furniture makers showing on stands of mixed work, such as Jim Partridge at the Scottish Gallery, the only stand to show a substantial range of furniture was the Devon Guild of Craftsmen.

Textiles fared somewhat better, thanks to a lively stand for The 62 Group of Textile Artists, although on this occasion no work by their Scottish members was included, and to the imaginative collaboration between the Dovecot Studios and The Scottish Gallery, with a stand dedicated to the work of the Dovecot, and incidentally, the best brochure in the entire fair. New work by Dovecot included tapestries by Sara Brennan and Jo Barker, with Fiona Mathison’s installation of silvery tree- like columns adding an appealing third dimension. Other tapestries included a dramatic Patrick Caulfield design which was developed during a major commission for the British Library, a similar developmental work designed by Liz Rideal, and a test piece for a forthcoming Wendy Ramshaw production in rich blues and greens. Master weaver Douglas Grierson was also on hand to talk to visitors, accompanied by an informative a/v showing the weavers at work in some detail. This was the only overtly educational stand, although the pieces shown were for sale, and the Dovecot followed this up with live weaving demonstrations of a Wendy Ramshaw design in one of the British Galleries Study Areas over the Collect weekend.

The Scottish Gallery itself, the only gallery from Scotland to show at Collect, was in pole position at the front of the largest of the three exhibition halls with an invitingly spacious and well designed stand showing a strong mix of international and Scottish artists in a variety of media: Fran Priest’s large sinuous  forms in clay which continue to push the material to its limits, beside Takahiro Kondo’s misted green ceramic and glass echoes of Orkney’s standing stones; a stunning group of jewellery by Dorothy Hogg, Susan Cross, Andrew Lamb and Peter Chang together with work by Jacqueline Mina, Wendy Ramshaw, and Catherine Martin; a luminous roller- imprinted silver platter by Adrian Hope and  a Michael Lloyd chased silver bowl contrasted with work by Simone ten Hompel and Australian Robert Foster; glass makers were represented with Keiko Mukaide’s dichroic glass, and work by Sally Fawkes and David Reekie; and textiles by a group of richly textured panels from Norma Starsznakowna.

This was clearly a carefully selected group of artists who are all at the top of their game, many of them prizewinners and with work in public collections. With work of this outstanding creativity and technical skill, prices were correspondingly high, as they were throughout the fair, yet even on opening night sales seemed to be moving steadily.

Apart from The Scottish Gallery, the only stand to include work by artists from Scotland was the Lesley Craze Gallery, with a group of dramatic paper neckpieces by Naoko Yoshizawa, and Georgia Wiseman’s jewellery of stones intriguingly ‘caged’ in gold.

At the opening of Collect, both Rosy Greenlees, director of the Crafts Council, and the Director of the V&A, Mark Jones, spoke with enthusiasm about the success of the event, including attendance figures for 2006 of more than 11,000 over the four days. But tellingly, neither referred to plans for 2008, although among the galleries rumours about a tent in the courtyard garden of the V&A were spreading. We all need to keep our fingers crossed for a positive future for Collect, which is certainly the highest quality fair of its type in Britain today.

Collect took place between 8 and 12 February 2007 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

 

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