A mecca for contemporary craft, the 21st edition of Collect Art Fair opens in London this week (28 February-2 March, previews 26 and 27 February) at Somerset House.
Run by the Crafts Council, this is the 21st edition of the event and 40 international galleries take part, predominantly showing work made in the past five years. Craft is a broad church, and so the works on display range from ceramics, metalwork and textiles to jewellery, glass, furniture and works made from materials such as beeswax and resin. Prices range from around £500 to over £50,000.
“Despite challenges in the broader art market, many Collect exhibitors are finding resilience through a focus on quality, originality, and storytelling,” says Isobel Dennis, the fair’s director. Galleries that “champion distinctive voices and foster direct connections between artists and audiences” are faring best in these uncertain times, Dennis says. Now is a tricky time for art and craft galleries alike and doing fairs is an expensive financial gamble. So, naturally, Dennis says, "costs are a consideration for any gallery, but many see Collect as a valuable investment—an opportunity to engage with serious collectors, curators, and institutions in a focused setting."
Annick Tapernoux's silver works with The Cold Press
Photo: Vincent Everarts
Dennis thinks the crafts on show at Collect each year reflect “both personal artistic narratives and wider cultural shifts." This year, a key theme is "the intersection of gender and heritage identity—how artists reclaim, challenge, and navigate cultural commentaries. Some celebrate heritage as a source of strength, while others engage with its complexities.”
She points to a new exhibitor, the Verbier-based AIFA, which will present of three female Japanese ceramists (ceramics traditionally being a patriarchal art form in Japan): Sayuri Ikake, Chisato Yasui and Teruri Yamawaki. Meanwhile Candida Stevens Gallery from Chichester, UK, “highlights artists exploring displacement, such as Manya Goldman’s textile reflections on exile and Marice Cumber’s ceramics shaped by personal experience,” Dennis says.
Another trend this year “is the growing prominence of wearable art”, Dennis says, with a large array of contemporary jewellery being exhibited by galleries such as Objects Beautiful (London) and BR Gallery (Beijing).
Dennis picks out a few personal highlights including Isobel Napier’s large-scale paper textile installation (presented by Flow Gallery) which will be hung in the spectacular spiral Nelson staircase within Somerset House. Bluerider ART (London) will present installations by artists including Kari Anne Helleberg Bahri, whose textile works explore "themes of restriction and isolation”, Dennis says. The Stoke-on-Trent based ceramics company 1882 Ltd will return to the fair after a break with some one-off and limited edition collaborations with well-known creatives such as the singer Robbie Williams, the furniture designer Max Lamb, the ceramicist Leah Jensen, and fashion designer Giles Deacon. Meanwhile The Cold Press (a new exhibitor based in Norfolk and London) brings a pared back presentation focused on the subtle qualities of surface in different materials through the work of three artists—Andrea Walsh in glass and precious metals, Noriyasu Soda in lacquer and Annick Tapernoux in silver.
Darren Appiagyei's wood carving
Courtesy of the artist
A high point of the fair is the Collect Open section, now in its 15th year and a chance to see makers who have truly mastered their chosen material through thousands of hours of practice and now revel in its possibilities, melding and sculpting it to its limits. Ten new projects will be presented this year, from Austria, The Netherlands, China, Ireland and the UK, selected by a panel with the criteria that they challenge “material, social, political or personal perceptions”.
The 2025 projects include: the knife maker Hugo Byrne’s Eating and place, a set of knives that rooted in the culinary heritage and landscape of Ireland; Growth by the wood artist Darren Appiagyei, a visceral work reflected on his late mother’s experience of fibroids, and The Entropy Reduction of Hundun, an intricate installation made with organic materials and inspired by the Chinese myth of Hundun (the chaos preceding the world’s creation), by Wanbing Huang, a 2023 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize finalist.
