Introducing the Apollo 40 Under 40 Craft

The art world has traditionally looked down upon craft. The little sister to the fine arts of painting and sculpture has been seen as unserious and – damningly – decorative. Twenty-five years ago, Apollo would have been unlikely to champion craft by placing it in the spotlight for one of its major annual projects.

But a lot has changed in recent years. Along with efforts to diversify the canon and bring a broader range of artists into museum collections, there has been a growing openness to looking at and appreciating what is often termed craft. Anni Albers’ tapestries and weavings were shown at Tate Modern in 2018, Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge placed Lucie Rie at the centre of its exhibition programme in 2023 – the same year in which LACMA mounted the show ‘Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction’. These are the threads of re-evaluation.

Apollo wanted to look at this area of making and artistry and seek out the 40 most exciting practitioners under the age of 40. There is both a vibrancy to this realm of visual culture and a feeling that something genuinely new is taking place. The people at work in this field are starting to discover that their work can be seen in the same places as the work of artists; as such, contemporary craft often displays a certain boldness.

The list is divided into four categories: the Artists; the Thinkers, spanning cultural critics and museum professionals; the Businesses who are finding ways to bring this previously overlooked category of art-making to a wider audience and confirm its monetary value as much as its artistic worth; and Patrons & Advocates, who range from collectors to the founders of non-profits that are steering the conversation about what alternative forms of artmaking will look like in decades to come.

The work of the Artists ranges from the bold, colourful applications of British artist Yinka Ilori, whose bright aesthetic has transformed a varied set of domestic and architectural spaces, to the meticulous, quiet brilliance of Dahye Jeong’s baskets, which take months to fashion from horsehair. Among the Thinkers are those, such as broadcaster and academic Ferren Gipson, who are grappling with the discipline of art history to bring to light hidden stories, as well as those who are driving contemporary practice forward, such as curator Rana Beiruti, whose work in cities including Doha and Riyadh gives a platform to artists; Beiruti founded an initiative called Platform to foster links between artists and designers in Amman in 2018.

The Business section takes in gallerists such as James and Christie Brown, whose Blue Mountain School combines spaces for artist residencies and exhibitions with a specially crafted restaurant; figures such as Aaron Angell, who gives artists an opportunity to work in mediums that are new to them; and artists who are dedicated to highlighting the work of specific parts of the world, such as Prince Malik Jewiti, who brings the work of African designers and makers to France, or Edmund Le Brun and Flore de Taisne, who founded Ishkar to provide makers in war-torn countries in the Middle East with a platform for their work. And the Patrons & Advocates include committed collectors such as Jonathan Anderson, whose championing of craft through his work with the Loewe Foundation and its craft prize might have done more than anyone to change the way in which craft is thought about internationally.

Biographies of those featured in the Apollo 40 Under 40 Craft, as well as the judges, have been published here, alongside a selection of exclusive interviews. We hope you enjoy finding out more about these impressive individuals whose work might just alter your perceptions of what craft can be.

Edward Behrens is editor of Apollo. Explore the entire list in depth here.