LONDON.- COLLECT, the international fair for contemporary objects presented by the Crafts Council, announced this year’s COLLECT Open participants.

Responding to an open call for applicants late in 2014, this year’s participants, selected by designer Tord Boontje, Show Director, Daniella Wells and the Crafts Council’s Head of Exhibitions and Collections, Annabelle Campbell, celebrate collaboration in making – seeing exciting and innovative designers reinterpreting traditional methods and in many cases branching into new media.

COLLECT Open, an alternative exhibition space on the second floor at COLLECT, will this year feature one-off installations by fourteen artists and four design historians that explore the ambition and depth of contemporary craft practice. The space presents a narrative on the future possibilities of craft, as well as attracting opportunities for commissions and collaborations for the artists.

COLLECT Open 2015 exhibitors include, Central Saint Martins textile graduate, Rita Parniczky who will exhibit a layered work from her ‘X-ray Fabric Series’. This 3m high installation, inspired by the tracery of fan vaulting, is at once both delicate and monumental; and by offering visitors the opportunity to experience the work in the round, they will be able to interact with it in the way they might with other three dimensional objects.

Innovative designer Katrin Spranger has teamed up with printing expert and chef, Julian Sing, to produce a 3D printed jewellery sculpture using dehydrated honey and edible gold leaf. This work makes reference to traditional jewellery in its design but at the same time plays with ideas of permanence, as it will actually be eaten on the final day of the fair!

Andrea Walsh, currently a participant in the Crafts Council’s Injection programme, will present a collection of new work combining ceramics, glass, metal and stone. Utilising a variety of traditional techniques, she has created exquisite and intimately-scaled objects whose undulating and angular surfaces beg to be touched.

Making Enhanced is a collaborative installation that pairs four writer and design historians with four makers to create objects that embody a shared interest. Jewellery designer Alice McLean has teamed up with writer Justine Broussard to explore themes surrounding materiality, whilst designer-maker Jennifer Gray and historian Soersha Dyon explore themes of material displacement in the 16th century. Ceramicist Tamsin van Essen and historian Betsy Lewis-Holmes‘s exploration of the human condition in the 19th century presents an engaging dialogue with the work of architectural collective PUG and historian Helen Kearney, which explores movements in contemporary design and architecture. Taking the form of object, drawing, writing and film, respectively, the four works come together in one larger piece to celebrate inter-disciplinary collaboration and the process behind it.

This thread of collaboration is further explored in the work presented by Valeria Nascimento, Christina Vezzini and Chen Sheng Tsang. Brazilian, Italian and Taiwanese respectively, all three share a deep affinity for nature, which is evident in their ceramic and glass works. Teaming up for the first time, the trio have produced an elegant and entwining wall installation using hundreds of porcelain, bone china and glass cups, which cascade, vine-like, over the surface in finely-crafted, organic clusters – at once a celebration of nature but also the intrinsic properties of the materials themselves.

The work of designer Kate Maestri is inspired by the lines, patterns and shapes of contemporary architecture. More commonly known for her large-scale glass installations, here she turns her hand to metalwork in her contribution to COLLECT Open. Comprised of nine distinct elements spread over eight metres of wall space, Kate layers blue and green sheets to recreate the undulating surfaces of the Southbank’s National Theatre.

Soojin Kang, who uses centuries-old hand-weaving, knotting, netting and plaiting techniques to explore themes of memory and sustainability. Her work, entitled The Waves in the Breeze, sees found objects incorporated into and consumed by textile. The work literally spills off of the wall and onto the objects using their forms as warp and weft, creating a fascinating interplay between hard and soft, old and new.

Rounding out this year’s participants is Seoyoon Kim, who was specially selected by Crafts Council Executive Director, Rosy Greenlees, from amongst the exhibitors at the recent Craft Trend fair (http://craftfair.kcdf.kr/index.php) in Seoul, South Korea. Like many of her fellow COLLECT Open counterparts, Kim also takes inspiration from the interaction between material and process and believes in the finding a balance between functionality and aesthetic value – a synthesis beautifully achieved in her sculptural tableware.

COLLECT, presented by the Crafts Council, returns to the Saatchi Gallery for its 12th year from 8-11 May 2015. In addition to the works on display in the COLLECT Open space, COLLECT has an impressive roster of 35 international galleries from across the world, representing the very best makers in contemporary craft.