Art of Wishes Gala 2023 raised £2.6m for Make-A-Wish UK, enough to fund over 1000 wishes.
The Gala was one of the first events to be hosted at the spectacular new Raffles Hotel London at The OWO. This historical landmark was the perfect setting for such an incredible evening where some of today’s most recognised artists, gallerists and celebrity talent gathered.
2022
In the Autumn of 2022, Art of Wishes staged an auction of fifty-one of Italian jeweller Fabio Salini’s creations, raising over £750,000 for Make-A-Wish UK.
The collaboration between Salini, Art of Wishes and Sotheby’s came about as a consequence of the turmoil caused by the Covid pandemic, during which Salini found himself repeatedly questioning the role of art in times of crisis. He said: ‘My jewellery is an aesthetic expression of concepts and feelings and the events of the past three years made me think about how I could use these works to help others. I was searching for a greater purpose for my work and as such am delighted to make this donation in aid of Art of Wishes — it is a magnificent charity that seeks to deliver dreams and experiences to children who are going through very difficult times. What is the purpose of art if it cannot change lives?’
Of the collaboration, Batia said, ‘I have always been a huge admirer of Fabio’s exquisite jewellery, and when he proposed this idea I was genuinely overwhelmed by his generosity. In making this donation, Fabio not only helped make the wishes of thousands of children come true, but also made a meaningful impact on their lives. I will forever thank him and offer my sincerest gratitude for his truly transformative gesture.’
2021
In 2021 Make-A-Wish UK granted its 15,00th wish. To commemorate this achievement, Art of Wishes commissioned artist Brendan Dawes to create an NFT artwork inspired by children and their wishes, to be auctioned at the 2021 gala.
Dawes uses generative systems, relying on data, machine learning and code to craft his pieces. This work, entitled 15,000 Wishes, features 15,000 multi-coloured strands, each one to represent a wish that has turned into reality thanks to the work of the Make-A-Wish UK Foundation. Hope, possibility, beauty derived from chaos, the restoration of childhood and a change from the norm are the themes that run through every strand.
June 2020
Amidst the nationwide lockdown of 2020, British artists Annie Morris and Idris Khan, OBE, each created and donated one hundred limited edition prints of two artworks to Art of Wishes.
Typical of the artist’s style, Khan’s Long Live Love (2020) is composed from a variety of media, including watercolour, oil sticks and sheet music, which he layers continuously to build an abstract, rhythmic piece.
Morris’ Two Hills (2020) takes inspiration from the daily diaries she filled during the pandemic. The re-occurring rhythms and symbols of her family’s life and anxieties are translated into this poetic, narrative drawing.
Khan said of the two prints, ‘“I think both images allude to a childlike drawing sensibility - free and creative movements and gestures… almost like beautiful wishes in themselves!”
June 2017
In 2017, Art of Wishes presented a number of artists with children’s wishes, asking them to create a visualisation of their desires.
Artworks included Tracey Emin’s tryptic I Was Wishing For You, Riding on the Waves, and I Wish for You, her recreation of nine-year-old Grace’s wish to ride her pony across the Welsh countryside. Gillian Wearing, Michael Landy, Dan Colen and Thomas Demand were among the other artists commissioned, who represented wishes such as Tamir’s wish to play viola with the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra and Amy’s wish to go to the Royal Ballet School in London.
Marcel Dzama’s lyrical, radiant visual language is presented through dream sequences or surreal, often subversive, fairytales. In scenes where both the whimsical and carnivalesque intermingle, Dzama folds contemporary social and political issues into an art historical narrative steeped in folk vernacular. Dzama works in media spanning painting, drawing, ceramic, video and costume design, as well as a recent work in mosaic produced for a public commission at the Bedford Avenue Station in Brooklyn, New York.
Dzama was born in 1974 in Manitoba, Canada. His work is found in numerous permanent collections including those of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa, and the Tate, London. Recent major solo exhibitions of Dzama’s work include those at the Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Mexico; the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, USA, and the Sara Hildén Art Museum, Finland. A major survey of Dzama’s career was held in 2010 at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Canada. Dzama lives and works in New York City.
Sivan Sternbach’s playful balloon sculptures are reminiscent of childhood memories and intended as talismans of such times past. Command of the medium of clay comes naturally to the artist, the result of her earlier career as a pastry chef. In both pastry and clay, particularly in Sternbach’s hands, there is a striking relationship between medium and effect, a lightness evoked through the careful working, and in many ways defiance, of dense media. Sternbach’s corpus of balloon sculptures offer a viewing experience both disorientating and delightfully provocative.
Propelled by striking social media success, Sternbach’s balloons have become a widespread sensation. Adorning spaces as distinct as the windows of flagship department store Bergdorf Goodman, New York, as well as the galleries of the Israel Museum in the artist’s native Israel, Sternbach’s balloons are an undisputed emblem of our contemporary time. Sternbach lives and works in Tel Aviv.
Over the course of six decades, Martha Jungwirth has evolved a singular form of abstraction centered on the notion of individual experience. Triggered by personal encounters, travel, art history, mythology and contemporary events, Jungwirth allows fleeting impulses to reveal themselves through paint. Adopting a tight chromatic scheme of pinks and reds, Jungwirth’s works are above all an extension of the artist’s own bodily experience and a testament to the significance of inhabiting the human form.
Jungwirth was born in 1940 in Vienna. The recipient of numerous accolades while still a student at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna, Jungwirth later taught at that institution for a decade. She was a co-founder and the sole female member of the Viennese collective Wirklichkeiten (Realities), whose work was exhibited at the Secession, Vienna in 1968. Retrospectives of Jungwirth’s remarkable career have been held at the Museum LIaunig, Neuhaus in 2020 and the Kunsthalle Krems in 2014.
In recent years, extensive solo exhibitions of Jungwirth’s career have been staged at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and the Albertina, Vienna. In 2018, Jungwirth received the prestigious Oskar Kokoschka Prize from the Austrian State. A forthcoming retrospective will take place at the Guggenheim, Bilbao in 2024.
