COLLECT, the international art fair for contemporary objects, will returns to the Saatchi Gallery, London, from 11 to 14 May 2012
Launched in London in 2004, COLLECT has become the leading international art fair for museum-quality contemporary craft, showcasing the very best ceramic, glass, jewellery, textiles, wood, furniture, silver and fine metalwork by both new talent and established artists.
Besides private collectors, COLLECT is an opportunity for national institutions – including the British Museum, National Museum Wales and the V&A – to make significant acquisitions, with public collections in Aberdeen, Belfast, Birmingham, Brighton, Exeter, Gateshead, Leeds, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford and Plymouth all having purchased work for their permanent collections.
This year there will be 31 galleries, six of whom are new to the fair, from 11 countries around the world, including Japan, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, Sweden and China. These galleries will occupy the ground and first floor of the Saatchi Gallery and the Project Space area on the second floor will feature ten large-scale installations by individual artists with a focus on textiles and furniture.
Artists at COLLECT 2012 include; Italian master craftsman Giovanni Corvaja (Clare Beck at Adrian Sassoon), whose exquisite jewellery pieces take several months to complete, Steffen Dam (Joanna Bird Pottery) showing his hand-engraved glass pieces evoking scientific specimen jars, bold ceramic sculptures by Wouter Dam, and jewellery by both Olympic medal designer David Watkins (Contemporary Applied Arts) and Paralympic medal designer Lin Cheung (Galerie Sofie Lachaert).
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