Collect opens this Thursday, 26 February, at Somerset House, bringing with it one of the fair’s most compelling sections: Collect Open. The annual showcase foregrounds bold, craft-led installations by artists and collectives who stretch material traditions into new conceptual territory.
Championing work that carries narrative weight — social, political, personal, or poetic — Collect Open reflects the fair’s wider commitment to artists pushing beyond the boundaries of conventional craft. This year’s selection ranges from experimental embroidery to contemporary silversmithing, united by a shared impulse to test what handmade practice can communicate now.
Chosen by an expert advisory panel, the selected projects signal fresh and ambitious turns within each artist’s practice, offering a glimpse of craft not as heritage alone, but as a living, evolving field.
“This year’s Collect Open presentations stand out not only for their exceptional craftsmanship but for the compelling stories they tell. Our eleven artists push the boundaries of their chosen materials, while expressing ideas of personal resilience, cultural heritage, ecological vitality and social change. Together they offer a wonderful reflection on the richness and relevance of contemporary craft and design. I’m particularly pleased that our newly established bursaries have enabled us to include more UK-based artists from global majority backgrounds. I’d also like to thank our Collect Open partner, Brigitta Spinocchia Freund, whose ambition and enthusiasm have helped bring the programme to new heights.”
TF Chan, Director of Collect,
The Collect Open 2026 artists are as follows:
Kamilah Ahmed (b. 1991, British, lives and works in London, UK) will create a large-scale embroidered textile installation celebrating Dhaka, Bangladesh’s cityscape. Rooted in heritage embroidery techniques such as Jamdani weaving and Ari hook embroidery, the work will incorporate handwrapped silk warps, both digitally and hand embroidered, suspended from a metal frame.
Amelia Dennigan (b. 1987, Irish, lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal) will produce two large-scale, wallhung embroidered tapestries and a fabric vase, all exploring the emotional complexity of miscarriage.
Dennigan will employ chiaroscuro and rich embroidery in a painterly method.
Olly Fathers (b. 1987, British, lives and works in London, UK) will build on his work with wood veneer to create an installation using 4,600-year-old bog wood, formed from trees long submerged in riverbeds. For the central piece, Fathers will use a traditional marquetry method in a ripple-like composition with 500 individually handcrafted segments.
Katherine James (b. 1993, British, lives and works in Leeds, UK) combines charcoal and silver, celebrating a traditional silversmithing process whereby charcoal is used as a base for soldering, yet
subverting its underlying material hierarchy. Silver chainmail will drape from vessels made of charcoalclay, questioning ideas of resilience and gender ideology.
Jihyun Kim (b. 1997, South Korean, lives and works in London, UK) will develop her series of slip-cast ceramic vessels in vivid colours, evoking the organic forms of fungi. Kim works with a specially formulated glaze that becomes gloopy and slimy at high temperatures, lending her pieces a magical
quality. She takes inspiration from Korean folk beliefs and rituals taught by her grandmother.
Chloe Lennon (b. 1994, Irish, lives and works in London, UK) will present a dining table and three stools, sculpted to represent the rock formations from which cobalt is sourced. Cobalt has a long history in art and ceramics, and is now used in the batteries that power electric cars. Lennon explores the ethics and systems of cobalt mining, specifically in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Ella Merriman (b. 1995, British, lives and works in London, UK) will present six sculptural furniture pieces that combine rush basketry with abandoned pieces of wooden furniture found on the streets of London. The installation will celebrate revival and reinvention, bringing together an endangered craft technique and discarded home objects.
Jynsym Ong (b. 1992, British, lives and works in Oxford, UK) will show a series of wood-fired pots, staged with a variety of props to signify uses that may be contradictory, surprising or puzzling. The installation will explore how objects become intrinsic to people’s own stories, identity and memory, influenced by their cultural upbringing.
Hanna Salomonsson (b. 1981, Swedish, lives and works in London, UK) takes inspiration from veteran
trees which provide essential habitats and hold deep cultural importance as living records of the landscape and local communities. She will present three monumental ceramic totems that explore the
threats posed to tree species due to disease and climate conditions.
Zofia Sobolewska Ursic (b. 1982, Polish, lives and works in Krakow, Poland) will experiment with straw intarsia, wood and woven metal to create a cabinet, sculpture, jewellery box and two mirrors. This
continues her interest in the contrasts between folk and bourgeois aesthetics; the severity and decorative qualities of marquetry; and geometric and organic forms.
Oriel Zinaburg (b. 1973, Israeli, lives and works in London, UK) will create a collection of ceramic sculptures inspired by Wally Birds, an idiosyncratic series of stoneware jars by the late-19th-century
pottery manufacturers the Martin Brothers. Alongside, Zinaburg is developing three-dimensional
ceramic tiles, which will be used as cladding fixed to prefabricated metal plinths and structures, to
explore the role of ceramics in architectural storytelling.
The Collect Open bursaries were launched in May 2025 to support UK-based artists from global majority backgrounds and to increase representation and equity across the programme. Developed in response to research conducted by Crafts Council that highlights how financial barriers can hinder participation in Collect as well as career progression in craft, the bursaries help to cover the costs of exhibiting and provide a one-off financial allowance for each recipient. The three recipients for the inaugural bursaries are Kamilah Ahmed, Jihyun Kim and Jynsym Ong.
The Collect Open 2026 expert advisory panel comprised the Director of Collect, TF Chan; independent curator, Lewis Dalton Gilbert; creative industries business consultant, Caroline Jackman; and Creative
Director of Spinocchia Freund, Brigitta Spinocchia Freund.
Collect Open is presented in partnership with Spinocchia Freund, the London-based interior architecture and design studio led by Brigitta Spinocchia Freund. The studio is a longstanding advocate of British craft and often collaborates with artists, artisans and heritage workshops, contributing to the preservation of traditional craft techniques and the promotion of modern innovation. Spinocchia Freund’s partnership with Collect Open, now in its second year, reflects the studio’s core principles of curation, collaboration and craftsmanship.
“I’m delighted to be supporting Collect Open 2026. Each year brings a fresh moment of discovery, an opportunity to encounter new voices and ideas that shape the future of contemporary art and design craft. Seeing these concepts at their earliest stages offers a rare insight into the creative process, and I know that anyone visiting the show will be captivated by the extraordinary talent and imagination filling the rooms, as Collect enters its next chapter under TF Chan’s thoughtful leadership.”
Brigitta Spinocchia Freund, Creative Director of Spinocchia Freund,
Collect 2026, 27th February to 1st March 2026, Somerset House @collectartfair
Preview 26th February 11AM–9PM
