I guess I started collecting at the beginning of the 2000s.
Before that I had a bit of interest, but I don't think that I really had the means to
start collecting and then I was able to start buying a few pictures, and for various reasons
I just became interested and intrigued in pictures that had been painted during my lifetime,
and to a degree that microcosm of art history that has occurred during my lifetime.
The collection is particularly rich in British art from the 1960s and 70s and within that
sort of area, and particularly strong in artists who have become associated with the pop art
movement.
Where I'm standing at the moment in the, in the gallery at the beginning of the exhibition,
I'm surrounded by a number of artists who all graduated at around the same time in 1961
from the Royal College of Art.
They included artists, big names like, David Hockney, Derrick Boshier, Patrick Caulfield,
Allen Jones, and R.B.
Kitaj.
The first pieces I remember buying really were some of the early Bridget Riley's that
I bought.
I have a neighbour in London who is an art dealer and he had one or two Bridget Riley's,
and I spent a little bit of time talking to him about them and reading about them.
And she is, along with David Hockney, his exception to the rule in only collecting work
from within his own lifetime.
So to get Bridget Riley's classic early black and white abstract work he's gone back to
1960, in the same way that for David Hockney he's gone back to collect some of his Royal
College of Art work and particularly the, the First Love painting.
It was quite breath-taking actually seeing it for the first time.
It's not like seeing it in the catalogue; you suddenly get the scale of, of some of
these exhibits.
I think that having had one look that's probably, the, the Patrick Caulfield here is the one
I'd pick out as my favourite so far.
It's quite strange to see the things that you normally see at home and they're on the
wall in a completely different context.
So it's like, it's good to see that, but it's not quite where should be, is the feeling
I get at the moment.
So, but, I think together in this sort of more neutral ambiance than the ambiance at
home they, as a group of pictures, they look absolutely fantastic, so I hope other people
think that as well.
Of the kind of 21st century work that he's collected, I focused on a number of artists
who were known as the YBAs or the Young British Artists who came to prominence in the 1990s.
Of course, these artists like David Ross, were being born in the 1960s, but it's very
interesting that I thought when I saw the collection that there is a kind of, a, what
you might call a pop sensibility running throughout the collection.
I think David is particularly attracted to the immediacy of a particular type of work.
One of my artistic friends tonight has very kindly joined us this evening, Marc Quinn.
His brother and I used to live together when we were at Nottingham University.
At that stage he didn't come to Nottingham he went to a different university.
But his brother and I lived together and therefore I have been a friend of his, and his family
for quite a long time now and very kindly he agreed to come along this evening to, to
see the show with us.
I've seen many of these works at his home, but to see them in a gallery is really interesting
and I think it's a kind of great collection of British art and a great thing to share
with people from Nottingham and other places too.
I think my impression seeing this, is how substantial this is as an art collection and
what it says about the diversity of British art.
So this is something that has immense local appeal because of David's place in this area.
But I think it says something about British art in a wider sense, and I really do hope
that people will come from much further afield to see what is a really substantial exhibition.