Crafts Council celebrates 40 years

17th December 2011

Crafts Council celebrates 40 years with online exhibition 40:40.

The Crafts Council celebrates 40 years of the Crafts Council Collection with a major online exhibition '40:40 - forty objects for forty years' was launched on 8 December 2011. Visit the website at www.4040.org.uk

Forty objects from the Crafts Council Collection have been selected by makers, writers and curators. The objects are presented with a personal response from their selector alongside a range of archive material including exhibition catalogue texts, films, audio clips, sketches, press articles, loan correspondence and installation instructions.

The pieces selected are by some of the most important makers of contemporary craft from the last 40 years, including Fred Baier's 'Star Wars chair' (1978), a small yellow bowl by legendary potter Lucie Rie (1983), pioneering jewellery by David Watkins (1983), Caroline Broadhead's 'Wobbly Dress' (1990), Grayson Perry's anarchic 'Mad Kid's Bedroom Wall Pot' (1996), Toord Boontje's 'Wednesday Light' (2001), and 'Arcady' (2007) by Edmund de Waal.

Selectors include graphic designer Malcolm Garrett, Shane Walter, founder of onedotzero, Vicky Richardson, Director of Architecture, Design and Fashion at the British Council, Glenn Adamson, Deputy Head of Research at the V&A and a number of makers including Lin Cheung, Steve Dixon and Michal Marriott.

The Inspired! section of the exhibition presents new commissions by six 'creative voices' who have all selected objects from the exhibition and responsed to them, offering fresh insights into the Collection. The commissions include a sound piece by Scanner, a poem by John Agard, a low-fi film by craft collective Prick your Finger and a series of illustrated 'flash fictions' by It's Nice That.

40:40 - forty objects for forty years is supported by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. It encourages new ways of engaging with work from the Crafts Council Collection and pilots a new approach to dynamic online archiving.