3-5 March 2023, Somerset House

https://www.annabera.com/collect-2023

During the 19th edition of Collect, the leading international fair for contemporary craft and design the Polish artist and maker Anna Bera is going to present her latest sculptural mirror from the collection OBJECT.

The work will be a part of Collect Open exhibition, the fair’s platform for pioneering and thought-provoking craft installations by individual artists.

Creating the collection Anna Bera searches for a specific mode of existence of objects in space, a manner that is monumental and heavy, even ostentatious; where anobject is something that appears suddenly and without justification, but its existence is indisputable.

It exists as if it was unable to non-exist. It is only what it seems to be, though it could also be anything else. Bera plays with the form of a utility object. As a result of these considerations, she creates a collection of sculptures that may perform the functions of mirrors. The mirror pane glued outside causes the frame function to be degraded and the frame becomes useless. There is no reason why objects are what they are.

Their existence may seem coincidental, but that does not make it less legitimate; and perhaps it is even more legitimate when there is nothing but existence in such an OBJECT.

The project that attracted the curators’ attention and was selected for this year’s Collect Open exhibition is a monumental 2.6-meter tall sculpture, hand-carved from sycamore wood with a mirror made of polished steel. The work will be on view from 3 to 5 March (previews 1-2 March), booth E28 in Somerset House, London.

More details about Bera’s sculptures at Collect: Collect 2023 | annabera

To book tickets to the Collect Fair: Collect 2023 | Somerset House

About Anna Bera

Anna Bera is a multidisciplinary creative, woodcarver and carpenter specializing in functional art using wood as her main medium.

She was born in 1985 and raised in a small village in the Swietokrzyskie Mountains, Poland.

Since 2014 she runs her own design studio and workshop based in Warsaw dedicated to creating unique objects, crafted by hand from wood, with inspiration coming from Bera’s observations of the relationship between humans and nature — from a biological, spiritual and cultural perspective.

The artist focuses on the ways the objects are used and on their ritualistic significance in everyday life. She creates sculptural furniture and utility objects, the form of which does not reveal the functionality, instead
encouraging the users to explore and give them their own meaning.

Her work has been exhibited in Poland, Europe, US and South-East Asia.

The exhibition is supported by the Polish Cultural Institute London, City of Kielce, Adam Mickiewicz Institute and Bieliny Community.