Don't Call Me Collectible!

Don't Call Me Collectible! examines the increasingly blurred territory between contemporary design, art, sculpture, and high-end craftsmanship. As collectible design has gained greater visibility within the market, the exhibition asks what we are actually looking at when we encounter these objects: investment pieces, functional works, or the material result of ongoing research and experimentation.

Rather than rejecting the market, the exhibition challenges the limitations of the term “collectible design” and the way it can reduce complex practices to questions of value and category. Drawing on ideas explored by design historian Glenn Adamson, the exhibition considers how labels such as “Design Art” and “Collectible Design” have often been used to describe work that falls outside conventional industrial production.

The participating practices instead occupy more fluid territory, moving between radical design, studio craft, material experimentation, and research-led approaches to making.