An inspiring COLLECTion

An unrivalled opportunity to see and buy contemporary works, International Art Fair ‘Collect’ took place earlier this month, and the Mint team were delighted to indulge our passion for design.

Exhibiting ceramics, glass, jewellery, wood, metal and textiles, Collect represents both established and emerging artists and makers from many of the world’s finest galleries in the inspiring environment of the Saatchi Gallery.

Continue reading to see just some of the pieces that caught our eye…

Receptive Vessels by Adi Toch

Adi Toch’s practice as a metalsmith centres on the making of engaging vessels and containers that investigate colour, movement, sound and tactility. The process of making hollow forms fascinates her, enabling her to work both with metal and space as materials, redefining borders between inside and outside.

Viewers were encouraged to speak or even sing in order to trigger the vessels’ reaction through gentle movement and sound. It was a playful interpretation of museum displays, a fresh antidote to the traditionally hushed gallery environment.

Ceramic Patchwork by Zoe Hillyard

Using the tradition of hand-stitched patchwork as a mending process, Hillyard  uses textiles to revive discarded and broken ceramics, creating a new tactile aesthetic for familiar forms.
The original surface decoration is replaced by printed textile design as individual fragments are covered with fabric and re-assembled solely by stitch.

Once rebuilt, chips and holes stand testimony to the making process.

Vicki Ambery Smith

Vicki’s jewellery and tableware are finely detailed interpretations of buildings from all over the world, with influences as diverse as ancient Green and Renaissance Italy to contemporary Europe and America.

After close observation, she manipulates dimensions, edits down to the essentials and uses a trompe l’oeil effect to capture the essence of a building.

Broken by Sue Paraskeva

Sue Paraskeva is a British artist specialising in the hand production of finely thrown porcelain. This installation comprises over 400 damaged porcelain vessels, each thrown with 250g of clay; the weight of a female human heart.

Exploring female mortality rates as a direct result of domestic violence, each piece is altered through the performative action of smashing, dropping or throwing.

Fragile Landscapes by Annie Turner

Annie Turner works in response to the landscape of the River Deben in Suffolk. The ceramic objects she creates echo the forms of its associated man-made structures, such as sluices, ladders and nets.

The surfaces of the works suggest processes of change and transformation, through erosion, decay, rusting, or accretion. The works reflect both the natural rhythms of the landscape and its fragility.

Australian Landscape works by Pippin Drysdale

Drysdale’s passion for the craft merges with a love of landscape, which has travelled across continents and in most recent years has focussed on the vivid dessert landscapes of Australia.

Her works evoke a timeless and breathtaking sense of space and place within finely crafted porcelain vessels, narrating the mesmerising vastness of colour experienced in the unique Australian landscape.

Swell by Sara Dodd

Sara draws inspiration from the natural world and observing how people interact. Her work explores how individual units can build to create sculptures and installations.

Drawn to porcelain for its delicacy and translucent quality, and its ability to play with light like no other material, Sara’s work aims to capture the fragility of clay by creating shapes and manipulating forms to give the illusion of weightlessness.

The Feast by Kaori Tatebayashi

Kaori grew up in a family who traded in pottery in Kyoto, Japan a city renowned for its ceramics. Surrounded by the simple, elegant forms of Japanese tableware from a young age, Kaori creates sculptural installations, painstakingly creating hand built copies of everyday objects in white stoneware.

Cabinet of Curiosities by Steffen Dam

Originally trained as a toolmaker, Dam’s aim is to describe the world as he sees it.

Dam’s work of cylinders contain nothing that exists in the ocean; the specimens are plausible but not from this world, the plants are only to be found in hid compost heap, and the flowers are still unnamed.

Meadow by Katie Spragg

Combining clay with a range of processes including animation, illustration and installation, Katie Spragg creates work that aims to arouse curiosity. Whether through sharing a story or conjuring a collective memory, her practice highlights the forgotten sources of joy and amusement that surround us.

Her latest body of work combines ceramic objects, installation and moving image to create momentary experiences that allude to the amazement and wonder of being outside in nature. The immersive work evokes the feeling of daydreaming in a field.

No Time by Nils Viga Hausken

Norwegian artist Nils Viga Hausken works in a variety of mediums, but in the past ten years much of his work has consisted of cross stitch on linen. This embroidery work deals with aspects of time and Nordic tradition.

No Time is an 18-piece cross stitch work, showing the transformation of a butterfly into a QR code.

Botanica Series by Valeria Nascimento

After studying architecture, Valeria found interest in the fusion between urban landscapes and natural forms. Inspiration is drawn mostly from the natural world and porcelain has the smoothness and the malleability that is needed to create new shapes, manipulating it to appear in some cases defiantly weightless.

Simple Pleasures by Audrey Walker

With her formal training in painting, Walker came across work made with textile materials and stitching when she stumbled upon an exhibition of fabric collages. This inspired new works, encouraging her to ‘paint’ with another medium.

Cylinders by Bodil Manz

Manz has been known as a master of eggshell porcelain for many years now. Her near paper thin cast porcelain cylinders are so translucent, you can sometimes even discern the light and shadow passing through both walls of a pot. Here, the outer and inner decoration merge to become one composition.