Bluestone Collection

Wednesday 3 April 2019

6pm
Studio XL>XS
8 Wharf Street (off Docklands Drive), Docklands

An exhibition of ten years of collecting contemporary craft

The committee of the Bluestone Collection is moving full tilt into our final years of collecting. Our ambition and indeed, our charter, is to house our collection in a public collection, gallery or museum.

Come and have a look at the Bluestone Collection so far! You know quite a few pieces but others will surprise you.

Bluestone Collection — What we made in our twenty-teens

Bluestone Collection was founded in 2010 by a group of craft supporters to build a collection that promotes contemporary Australian craft exhibition practice.

As members of the craft community, we are working to encourage a high standard of exhibition work within Victoria and raise the profile of contemporary craft.

During the 20th century, craft in the state of Victoria was promoted by a number of collecting bodies, particularly the National Gallery of Victoria and the Victorian State Craft Collection. The Victorian State Craft Collection lapsed in the 21st century and it was felt important to retain a collecting focus. 

Bluestone Collection follows the model of other visual arts collections established by private individuals around Australia, such as the Derwent Collection established by the late Dick Bett, and Citizen Collectors Hawkesbury One. Such collections are funded by individual members who then distribute and rotate the works through their homes. 

As an incorporated association rather than an investment collection, it has always been our intention to donate the works to a suitable institution once the collection reaches maturity.

Over the course of its ten years, Bluestone Collection will have surveyed important craft exhibitions in order to acquire work that represents quality and diversity. The selections are made by established craft practitioners and curators. 

We are reaching our ten-year milestone in 2020 and this collection will be a unique cross-section of the skill and imagination at work in studios over the second decade of the 21st century.

See: Bluestone Collection

Image: Susan Robey, Splay, 2010, ceramic, paperclay (Photo: Phillip Smith)