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.
Maarten Baas is a renowned artist and designer, whose work emerges from the intersection of these fields. Known for his craftsmanship and public works as much as for conceptual art, installation and performance, Baas embodies an unruly intellectualism and theatrical flair. Enthralled by the concept of time, Baas’ engagement with the fourth dimension permeates much of his work across media as divergent as video and performance, sculpture and set design. Above all, what emerges is a respect for the abstractions and multiplicities of time, and the way it takes shape within the mind of the individual.
Baas was born in 1978 in the Netherlands. Amongst many public and private collections, Baas’ work is found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. In 2016, Baas was awarded the Artprize for his Real Time Sweepers Clock. In 2012, two of the artist’s series, ‘Smoke’ and ‘Clay’, were listed in the New York Times ‘Top 25 Design Classics of the Future’, and in 2009 Baas was named Designer of the Year at Design Basel/Miami. Baas lives and works in the Netherlands.
Michael Armitage’s pictorial narratives look to the visual iconography of East Africa. To create his panoramic visions, Armitage draws from historical and current events,
the media, and his own memories. He paints atop Lubugo, a Ugandan cloth made from bark that has been beaten and flattened over a period of days. Ultimately, Armitage understands art to be a vehicle for social change and he encourages viewers of his work to gaze directly at the worlds he reveals.
Armitage was born in Nairobi and now splits his time between Nairobi and London.
He received his BFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Basel, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, and the Royal Academy in London. In 2020, Armitage opened the Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute to showcase art by East African artists. In 2021, he was elected a Royal Academician of Painting.
Claire Tabouret’s paintings and prints investigate notions of representation, recollection, and the ways in which relationships are constituted. Tabouret is particularly fascinated by ideas around identity, and intimacy and she draws inspiration from magazine photographs, textbooks, and snapshot imagery. These she transforms using a vibrant palette and loose brushwork to create diaphanous veils of Day-Glo colour. Her compositions rarely function as fixed likenesses but instead serve as fluctuating entities which evolve in time.
Born in France, Tabouret studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work is held in Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Musée des Beaux Arts de Montréal, among other public collections. Tabouret has had recent solo presentations at the Musée Picasso, Paris, and the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami; her exhibition I am spacious, singing flesh was a collateral event of the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022.
