Outcomes - Seminar 3
Collaboration

PRESENTATION TO THE SEMINAR ‘COLLABORATION’ BY JANICE BLACKBURN, CURATOR AND WRITER
VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM, SEPTEMBER 22ND 2006

The success of everything I’ve done has really been the result of collaboration, and it is interesting hearing this word champion because in a sense I’m seen as a champion for some people, but in turn I’ve been championed by many people. My first champion was the auction house Sotheby’s who, in 1997, gave me the opportunity to put on an exhibition, a selling exhibition of contemporary decorative arts.

For Sotheby’s it was a big gamble because we had to turn an auction house into a retail outlet, which they had never done before. They didn’t have staff who knew anything about retail, and it was up to me to find voluntary helpers. In the first show we included too many people, we had, I think, 80 exhibitors, ranging through textiles, silver glass, furniture, all kinds of disciplines. What the show succeeded in doing for Sotheby’s was to bring in an enormous range of new customers, people who had never walked through the doors of Sotheby’s before, particularly young people.

For me it was a scary experience because I also had never done anything like that before, and, the person that championed me to do it was head of the Impressionist department, still is, Melanie Clore. The Chairman of Sotheby’s at the time was slightly under-whelmed by the idea but Melanie talked him into it, and gave me the chance. It was a huge success, both for the exhibitors, who were able to reach a new audience of serious art collectors, who had never been exposed to craft before, people who almost regarded craft as a dirty word. This new audience came and saw wonderful objects and they started buying them. My experience with textiles in that first show was with Kate Blee. I am a great admirer of Kate’s work and my problem at that time was how to display textiles. Kate’s scarves and hangings were incredibly difficult to show. We tried all kinds of ways of draping them on walls and hanging them from clothes lines with pins, and they just didn’t look every good, and Kate and I battled with this.

Shizuko Kimura was another textile artist whose work I had seen at the Royal College of Art in her degree show. She is a very interesting case, because her beautiful life drawings, which are stitched, fall between the fine art and the craft divide. It was very interesting to observe people’s approach to them. The contemporary art collectors looked at them and thought that they were contemporary art. Then when they saw the price, which of course was very low in comparison to something that would be in an art gallery, the interesting thing was that it slightly put them off buying them. I can’t give you an explanation for that, and I had difficulty explaining it to Shizuko, and I’ve shown her work several times in London at Sotheby’s exhibitions and in New York.

These craft exhibitions became an annual event at Sotheby’s, and became extremely poplar, and I think it did help put several of the artists that I showed on the map, and, I still work with many of them.

I then moved on to more themed exhibitions, and one of the first was called Out of the Closet, in which I wanted to show the connection between art and fashion. Three designers: Hussein Chalayan, Dai Rees and Freddie Robbins. Hussein Chalayan showed his robot dresses, which moved up and down. Dai Rees was particularly interesting because he was trained as a ceramicist, he became a milliner, and a fashion designer. His dresses were extraordinary works of art, as well as being beautifully crafted garments. Freddie Robbins showed her extraordinary knitted things, and everything was for sale. Again this brought in such a mixed audience, creating the opportunity for people to look at art and craft and design in one place, it also had a theme. I think that themes, if they’re good themes, are important because it creates interest across a broad spectrum of audience.

I did two exhibitions in New York at Sotheby’s that were called the Unexpected – a title reflecting that the exhibition was at Sotheby’s, it was in New York, everybody in the first show, was mainly from England and a few Europeans. I had several textile artists in that exhibition, Kate again, and people who created fashion out of paper, including Charlie Thomas, who makes exquisite couture garments from paper. He created a whole Channel line, including the suit with the classic buttons, the shoes, the quilted handbag. People came up to me and said why on earth are you showing Channel here? And I said, actually they’re made in paper. They were so realistic that people could not see the difference.

In terms of collaboration, an interesting example occurred in connection with this exhibition. We approached Burberry with a very specific sponsorship proposal: to sponsor Charlie Thomas to recreate their current range, but made from metallic paper and other types of paper, these pieces then to be displayed in their shop windows. Our intention was to create interest in the Sotheby’s exhibition, a kind of indirect sponsorship. Burberry agreed and showed the designer collection in the windows in Madison Avenue, and I then think it moved to LA and then it went to Paris, and finally we had it on a show at Sotheby’s. This particular collaboration worked very well, for Burberry, for the exhibition, for Sotheby’s and for Charlie, who’s now doing all kinds of other interesting things and is connected with Gucci and does a lot of work for magazines and has moved into ceramics.

These projects demonstrate a way of being able, even in a commercial sense, to give people an opportunity to do things that they wouldn’t have the opportunity to do otherwise. Again, it’s a champion championing someone else, who takes the opportunity, and it gives opportunities all along the line.

In 1998 I curated an exhibition at the Bowes museum called Spirit of the Time. This was an interesting collaboration in a sense that it was very, very difficult. Unlike working for and with Sotheby’s, who have always been unbelievably supportive and accommodating and gone out of their way to help me as much as they can, the Bowes museum had many problems at the time including the fact that we had no money to do this exhibition. I loved the museum, it’s like a mini V&A, started by John and Josephine Bowes in the mid 19th century. As I walked around the museum, which has a wonderful collection of costumes, just everything, I realized that John and Josephine Bowes were not academics, they were shopaholics, they were probably the earliest known shopaholics. I thought the organizers were never going to like this, but in fact they did, because I think I understood where John and Josephine were coming from, they loved to shop. They built this museum, a copy of a French chateau in the middle of Country Durham, perched on a hill. It looks completely ludicrous stuck in the middle of County Durham, but it’s wonderful and it’s mad and it’s quirky.

Because there was absolutely no money it was a question of thinking out of the box, and how thinking out of the box can actually make people really enjoy what they see. One of the exhibitors, Jo Gordon who is a milliner, at the time was making amazing feathered cocktail hats and I really couldn’t think how I was going to show these wonderful hats. I said to one of the curators, I bet somewhere in this crazy museum there are those awful stuffed birds in cases that the Victorians had. It turned out that in the attic where nobody ever goes I found these cases of stuffed birds. I decided to show Jo’s hats on the stuffed birds. However, the stuffed birds were riddled with maggots and they had to be put into an industrial deep freeze to freeze the innards. I’ve never told Jo to this day that her hats were on these maggot-riddled birds but they looked absolutely wonderful and we put them back into the glass cases, so there were all these dead pheasants with these amazing millinery confections on their heads.

I also noticed that there was a wonderful portrait of Josephine Bowes wearing a very stunning dress from Worth, and I think Worth at the time was just starting as the new couturier in Paris. At the time of the exhibition John Galliano was in his early days at Dior, so I approached Dior and they leant us a John Galliano ball gown, which we put it underneath the portrait of Josephine and the train of the Galliano dress was the whole length of the gallery. And people really understood that, what Josephine was buying then was very new, was very cutting edge, was quite daring, and what Galliano was doing now was likewise. I think it made real sense that people could see this connection.

I also want to make the point that when I come up with themes, and they sometimes have quite catchy titles like the Closet, they aren’t just jokey or just about style, they are made with the idea of getting people to focus on them. There has to be real serious content and substance in it. This also relates to how I locate work. Emily Bates, who at the time was making dresses fabricated from Human Hair, was one of the artists in the Bowes exhibition. In the Museum there was an area that was full of religious iconic objects and portraits, and I placed Emily’s dresses in amongst these portraits.

I did a themed exhibition at Sotheby’s in, I think, 2003, and I think it was the last exhibition I did there, called Waste to Taste, to do with objects made from recycled material. I did that not because I am an environmentalist, it was more because I’m intrigued with what people throw out. I’m very fascinated by what I find in skips and I love ideas about what you can do with things that people throw out.

For Waste to Taste I was looking around for sponsorship and I went to a design group called JAM to discuss what they could do. They suggested approaching Woolworth’s in order to be able to do a whole room installation completely made up of pick & mix candy sweets. Woolworth’s gave us £15,000 for this room, and all the pick & mix sweets we wanted. JAM made clothes, display units and the floor and the curtains were all made from pick & mix sweets. They made a table from bread and then covered it in white and black chocolate, they made picture frames from all these candies, and Woolworth’s gave them early photographs of the Woolworth’s stores.

It was really wonderful, and in order to do this we had about twenty students from the various colleges, from St Martins, Royal College, etc, and they were literally making these floors, making the curtains, and we were placing the objects. So that was a good collaboration. It was also a good example of sponsorship and being able to go to a client like Woolworth’s with an idea that was gong to actually make sense for them. They got huge publicity, they used the visuals in their annual report. They probably got the equivalent of a quarter of a million pounds worth of publicity from their investment of a mere £15,000. JAM were delighted. They also made a chandelier for this exhibition out of 50,000 paper-clips which they priced at Sotheby’s for eleven thousand pounds, and nobody bought it, and it was sold at auction by Philips two years ago for forty thousand dollars.

Everyone was very happy, and it was enjoyable, and we got loads of children and students and people coming to enjoy it. It was a themed exhibition in an unlikely location, with work by serious craftspeople and designers. And I went on to do many exhibitions at Sotheby’s, only stopping a couple of years ago and in fact I would say that Collect really followed on and my assistant who has been with me from the beginning, Daniela Wood Wells is now the business manager. I think the Crafts Council had seen that they could upgrade the Chelsea Crafts Fair to something where real collectors would come, because they could see the calibre of clients and customers and devoted followers that would come to the Sotheby’s exhibitions in New York and in London.

The most recent project that I am still involved with is an exhibition at Chatsworth which is a selling exhibition of sculpture by Sotheby’s. I didn’t really know why I’d been asked to do this because sculpture’s not at all my expertise. I think the idea was that I would be working with the two experts from the contemporary British and Impressionist Department who were the experts, but they needed someone again who had a fresh eye, could think out of the box, and would be able to bring a new idea of how to place work.

Having Chatsworth, the grounds of Chatsworth at our disposal was (a) an enormous treat, and (b) a challenge, because it’s huge, it’s got its own sculpture, classical sculpture, and it’s got the house. I went to have a look at it, and it is absolutely stunning. But I walked around and I thought, what’s going to bring this alive? I remembered that I’d seen an exhibition at Kew that included a boat sculpture by Dale Chihuly which I thought was just gorgeous. Sotheby’s, although they really didn’t know who he was, went along with it, and with great difficulty we commissioned a boat because the one at Kew had already had been sold. I think it is the iconic piece in the exhibition, in that it really brings the house and everything to life. It was, for Sotheby’s, an unusual thing to do, and also for Chihuly, because he had never heard of Chatsworth. He had about four months in which to make this glass boat. They had to send over two technicians from Seattle to install it. But it’s given a spirit I think to the exhibition.

It was just being able to find positions for the works that people would relate to, and I don’t mean people that already knew about contemporary or impressionist art, I mean the visitors to Chatsworth who knew absolutely nothing about contemporary art. It’s just interesting hearing people’s comments now that they’ve got used to it, and seeing just the average visitor going round a map that we’ve prepared, and really taking an interest. For example, we’ve put a Miro on a rock in the middle of a stream. And it really looks beautiful. When you look at it in the grounds, and then you would see it again in a gallery with white walls, it really does look, I have to say, better in the Chatsworth setting

I think, whether the visitors like it or they don’t like it, they won’t forget it. And to me that’s a very important experience. Whenever I’m installing or curating an exhibition, because I don’t come from an academic background, everything I do is fairly instinctive, and if it succeeds I’m delighted, and if it fails, well, I learn for the next time.

And I think, having done this exhibition of sculpture, that was a big learning experience, it was a wonderful experience, it was also very stressful because this work is all for sale and its been very highly publicized. I think that installing sculpture is a bit like installing textiles. They’re difficult to show in a conventional gallery. I always have a problem when I’m showing textiles to make them really have their own presence and their own voice, particularly when they are shown amongst other work that is much more dominating, for example furniture or lighting. With this particular show at Chatsworth being able to have this beautiful outdoor setting was a gift. And I know that people coming to it will get a lot of pleasure from seeing that.

I do two commercial things which I think are fairly relevant when we’re talking about collaborations and sponsorship and championing. I have been doing consultancy with Liberty, and last year I did an exhibition on the fourth floor, which we called the Spirit of Liberty. I showed thirty eight craftspeople whose work included furniture, textiles again, jewellery, silver, some lighting, and Liberty actually commissioned work from I think it was five of them. Liberty’s allowed them to work with the Liberty archives, which are very, very well protected. These particular artists were able to go to the archives and get their inspiration from the original Liberty designs. I’ve always been a great fan of the store Liberty and what I wanted to do with this selling exhibition was to try and get into the mind, if I could, of Mr. Liberty, who was a pretty eclectic collector himself, and to try and select people and work that I thought he would have selected had he lived today.

They were all people who were working in an unusual way with different materials and really challenging different techniques. It’s not easy working within a store because they have their own very fixed idea so it was a difficult thing to do. After that I didn’t really want to do any more exhibitions, but I work with them as a sort of creative consultant and I spot people for them that I think will work for them, either commercially or work, doing work in their windows. Particularly I try and use young people. I go around as many college degree shows as I can.

Liberty’s aren’t the only ones who are now going through this route, and nor were they the first. Hermes have always used designers for their windows and they also commissioned a Milanese designer who makes bags from a sort of rubberized fabric that she has patented herself, and she insets, into this rubberized fabric, material. Sometimes it’s antique fabrics that she finds, lace collars, which look gorgeous, she’s made table mats out of rubberized fine material, out of antique lace collars, and they’re absolutely beautiful. Hermes asked if she would do a range of bags from scraps of scarves and ties that they no longer needed. She wasn’t allowed to sell them herself. She could only sell them through the museum in Paris, and it was a limited number and it was being able to buy an Hermes bag for the equivalent of about £30 but once they were over they were over.

I think that there are many commercial opportunities, particularly for textile artists, that I don’t think people are aware of or even know how to go about approaching these people, whether it’s Armani, whether it’s Sotheby’s, in my case, Liberty, Krug champagne I’ve worked with, they’ve done a whole designer sponsorship programme. Maybe sometimes people think it’s not the way they want to go, that they might be in some way selling out. I don’t believe it is. I think it’s a way of reaching a new audience without compromising work at all, but I think if you’re interested in approaching these people you have to go with something that’s very relevant to them, you know, for a while Spode were working with Charlotte Hodes and she’s now doing a project at the Wallace Collection and selling her work there.

So, you know, all these routes really work to your advantage if you approach them properly, and, I don’t know always that people like the Crafts Council are aware of how to go about it. In my experience they’re not. A good note to end.

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