Beyond Collecting

The old idea of the collector was of a connoisseur imposing his taste on the world. This has thankfully changed. For contemporary collectors it is very much a two way relationship with art and the world. It is the same with art advisors. I learn from artists, gallerists, other curators and collectors. The collector, Ayşe Umur, has long between interested in the relationship between books and art, between the written word and image, so I constantly now look for these connections. On one of our first forays into the art world together, she came with me to meet the artist Nilbar Güreş and acted as an interpreter. It was the first time either of us had met the artist but after some spiky exchanges it was the start of a wonderful friendship between all three of us. The roles in the art world can be extremely blurred and fluid. We change each other visions. Since meeting Ayşe Umur, who does have a wonderful collection of Nilbar Güreş's work and many works from artists we have visited together, we have worked on research, exhibitions and books together, including the Turkish edition of The Global Art Compass, Ali Kazma: A Voyage around our Minds and Doublethink: double-vision at the Pera Museum, Istanbul. 

Amalia Ullman's alter-ego in her instagram series proclaims that 'books are better than people.' In Dead Weights, 2013, Cyprian Muresan has piled books on top of 12 engravings. Art history is flattening his prints illustrating the Ilf and Petrov's The Invisible Clerk.   

Art Advisor to Man Group

2000-2008

Employed to choose pictures for Man Group's walls, my greatest excitement was introducing Man to Booker. The ensuing labour of love was building a library in the boardroom. With a committee of the Chairman Harvey McGrath and Sybille Möller, we decided to go further than just acquiring every book that had been on the long or short list for the Man Booker prize, but the other key books by the authors. We ended up with well over a thousand first editions.  To balance image and text we turned the bookcases into cabinets of curiosities. The 17th century writer, Pierre Corneille, peeps out between the books of Paul Bayley and Beryl Bainbridge. Below a first century BC Roman satyr is harvesting wine.  There were older fragments including hierogylphics from 2,500 BC. Classical Roman, Greek and Egyptian ceramics and glass were mixed with Han dynasty bronzes. 

Rugby Sculpture Park

Neil Lawson-May had the dream that it would be good to give Rugby a sculptural lift. He asked me to work with him. He approached Rugby School and they embraced the idea of such a generous gift. So far there are two works of art in place and one on the way. Neither of the two works are small. The first was not even a sculpture, but an eleven metre drawing, a life size depiction of young mother sperm whale (Physeter Macrocephalus).  It immediately engaged the pupils.

The second work, Gavin Turk's Eggball, 2016, may not look quite as big but is certainly heavier. It is a six foot high bronze ball that looks like a cross between an egg and a rugger ball. It is sited on the very fields that Rugger was  invented when in 1823 a boy at Rugby School, William Webb Ellis picked up the football in a match and ran with it.