Journal

COLLECT OPEN 2018 | selected by Jay Osgerby and the Crafts Council

22–25 February 2018

In February, Collect Open returns to the Saatchi Gallery, unveiling new work from 14 makers from across the UK to Collect’s international audience. For the makers, the exhibition provides a unique opportunity to step outside the confines of their usual practice and experiment with new concepts and creative directions – and to showcase the results at one of the highest-profile platforms in the UK. Collect Open has historically been a channel through which many of the featured makers find gallery representation, earn commissions and get picked up by curators. 

The Value of Making

‘As a society we are losing so much by not recognising we need a population with a broad variety of skills and talents. I’m really concerned about the position of making in the hierarchy of skills we value as a society, and how this is exacerbated by the decline of making in schools.’  EJG

A professional maker for the last 25 years, textile artist Emily Jo Gibbs left a career making luxury evening bags to focus on wall-based embroidered works, hand-stitching exquisite still life portraits in a collage of silk organza. For Collect Open, she is presenting a new body of portrait work, depicting various making disciplines through to-scale representations of tools and making an argument for the social and cultural importance of craft in the process. 

Collect 22-25 February 2018
Saatchi Gallery
Duke of York's HQ
King's Road
London SW3

More information and tickets

Emily MacKillop