For Friedman Benda’s participation at PAD London 2025, the gallery is pleased to present a special booth curated by British designer Faye Toogood.
“Pebbles, bits of shoes, lumps of wood riddled with holes, horsehair brushes – all smoothed and ennobled by the sea…” – Charlotte Perriand on treasure hunted from Normandy beaches
What do you hold on to? A conker burnished from years of pocket polishing. A faded novelty keyring you would save over the car keys, perhaps even the car. For PAD London 2025 Toogood presents The Magpie’s Nest, a tribute to curiosity, collecting and curating. Faye Toogood’s foraged sticks, stones and broken bones are displayed amongst works from a collective of designers Faye has curated. Toogood has designed new works for The Magpie’s Nest, including Vale (a hand carved Oak wall relief) and The Magpie Tapestries (five wool tapestries woven from still life artworks celebrating Faye’s personal cabinet of curiosities, and the tools of the Toogood studio.)
Amongst Faye’s hoarded treasure are playful and provocative works by Misha Kahn, Andrea Branzi and Fernando and Humberto Campana. Sculptural works celebrating their unique materiality and distinctly different responses to the natural world. The Magpie’s Nest is not a vitrine of trophies, it’s an uplifting and energetic choir of colliding collective voices.
“My dad was a really big bird watcher, so we were always out walking and foraging. I didn’t have a huge amount in the way of toys, instead I was encouraged to collect natural things. One day it might be sticks and so back to the house we would come with a bundle of sticks, tie them up, make something with them. Another day pebbles from the beach. It was this idea that you collect it, and then you do something with it. In my case, that would mean arranging the collection, or trying to find patterns. The ritual of collecting and obsessing over natural objects, rearranging and trying to make sense of the world through them… it’s an enduring influence on my practice. Over the years lots has been given away, lost or sold, but the things that stay are those tiny treasures gathered from adventures in nature. I seem to have passed the obsession on to my daughter Indigo. Just like me she will know exactly what’s important in there and what’s not, where she got each piece. And then she’ll endlessly rearrange it all into her own secret typologies.” – Faye Toogood
The presentation features work by Andrea Branzi, Estúdio Campana, Najla El Zein, Misha Kahn, Raphael Navot, Faye Toogood, and Thaddeus Wolfe.
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