PATRICK MCINTYRE
Executive Director
Ties are like semaphore: a hoisting of coloured fabric to communicate without words. I have a lot of them and keep adding to the collection. There are ties to communicate cheerfulness or sobriety, approachability or restraint, provocation or respect, formality or intimacy. Whether or not these nuances are as legible to the outside world as I imagine, they certainly help put me in the right frame of mind for the day’s challenges. While a nice new tie can cost as much as a good pair of trousers, whenever I am complimented for my tie, it is usually an old piece of polyester from the 1970s that I pinched from my dad’s wardrobe.
SOPHIE GANNON
Gallerist
I turned what I collect into a career. I began my arts career at Sotheby’s—everyone in the auction business is a collector of some sort. Opening up my own gallery has allowed me to pass on a love of collecting art to others. My art collection at home tracks my personal history. I can see my taste and interest change by looking at the chronology of my collection. There are pieces in my collection that are still in bubble wrap and boxes because I don’t have room to display them. But I keep on collecting—the desire to collect endures.
KAIMIN
Creative Director
I do not collect any one type of item, but I do have a swelling compilation of objects—books, art, and clothing—that are unified by a central theme, reflecting my overall aesthetic palate; a study in the realm of style. With no real pattern of assembly, this collection traces the journey of my floating mind. This glimpse of the past also encapsulates my hope for the future: infinite challenges and experiments to dismantle the status quo on the way to a new vision and the building of a creative empire. The most recent focus is my own fashion label KAIMIN.
BON DUKE
Photographer
I collect rings. I love to curate them on my hands and they become a part of me. It has to be a ring that screams out at me. It’s a collection overtime that I enjoy. Whenever I lose a ring, I don’t get a replacement. It just means that it wasn’t meant to be. Rings are also part of my identity, without them I feel naked!
TONI MATICEVSKI
Fashion Designer
It could be said that I collect vintage perfumes. I collect more so for the sense of what the scent represents at the time, what the scent is, how it’s worn, how it’s packaged and just the overall feeling associated with that scent. I collect to use, not to keep. There is something quite romantic about the idea of opening a fragrance created 40 or 50 or 60 years ago and wearing it today. The difference in the feeling associated with the name given to the scent, how it was bottled and packaged. I also love the aura associated with it, the time, the clothes that accompanied it, the imagery and the sentiment it brings when I put it on.
SUSAN TAYLOR & PETER JONES
Boutique Owners
For me, it started with drinking straws and patterned shoelaces. For my husband Peter, stamps and cricket books. Our collecting impulse found its way ultimately to non-objective art, specifically geometric abstract painting, contemporary jewellery and artist’s books. These stimulate us both intellectually and emotionally. We both love finding connections between things, the constant learning involved and the excitement of the chase and the capture. Collecting has also connected us to lovely people we wouldn’t otherwise know, not least the artists themselves, who inspire us to look more closely and carefully at everything.
SEAN MULQUINEY
Filmmaker
I love and collect films. So many in fact, that I no longer have anywhere to store them. Stacked in assorted piles and in no particular or disciplined order, they represent a body of work much as fleeting, cinematic moments for me. I also have an interest in collecting individual scenes and shots that may interest me from a composition, lighting or dialogue perspective. I love the serendipity of re-discovering these moments for inspiration and the development of my craft.
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