What's on your walls?

"Like the making of art itself, collecting reminds me of prospecting. Some perceived sparkle makes you start to dig and then a seam can be followed."

Julian Opie is a British artist I've never looked at twice. His flat, graphic style always got the "so what?' reaction. But reading about his art collection has changed that.

Opie has put together an exhibition of his collection and his own work - and what strange bedfellows they are - portraits from the 17th and 18th centuries don't, on the surface, connect with his "sculptures".

Julian with T-shirt (2005)

LCD screen with integrated software

...........Thus starts my latest post to Ragged Cloth Cafe, arising from an article (published in Art Quarterly, Spring 2014) I read over breakfast one day. Much is made of writer's libraries and their annotations in their books ... but what about artists' art collections - how do these become part of the "footprint" of an artist?

To see more pix and read about Opie's collection, and why he collects these works, just click here - and please leave your answer to the question at the end - "what's on your walls"; how does your collection influence your work?


'Julian Opie Collected Works' is at The Holburne Museum, Bath, 22 May to 14 September; Bowes Museum, Durham, 4 October to January 2015.