5 kaleidoscopic projects by new Crafts Council trustee Yinka Ilori

‘For me, craftsmanship is about storytelling,’ says multidisciplinary artist Yinka Ilori, who has joined the Crafts Council’s Board of Trustees. Ilori has rapidly risen to fame for his upcycled furniture, installations and public art pieces in a trademark eye-popping palette, inspired by his British-Nigerian background.

‘I am particularly inspired by cultural aspects of my Nigerian heritage, where parables are woven into objects,' he explains. 'I don’t just fix broken chairs, I give them new stories. When people buy them, they add their own stories.'

Layers of narrative are central to his work. 'This approach helps us build stronger connections with the things we live with. We look after things better and value their use more. I’m not a fan of the term “upcycling” – I prefer to talk about “re-loving”.’

Speaking of his four-year appointment to the Crafts Council's Board, Ilori says: ‘I have been impressed by the organisation’s commitment to support young makers and designers and am really looking forward to bringing my ideas and ambition to the Board in ensuring new voices and stories are heard.’

Here, we spotlight five key projects by Ilori:

COLORAMA skate park, 2020

In July, Ilori brought his signature hues to COLORAMA: an indoor skate park in the La Condition Publique, a warehouse-turned-cultural centre near Lille in France. Its concrete columns and brickwork were transformed by bright colours – bubblegum-pink and turquoise – alongside pastel peaches and yellows. The aim? To create a space that feels welcoming for all ages and skateboarding skill levels.

Dedications to Earth: Project Earth, 2020

This summer, Ilori has taken over three windows on Selfridges’ flagship store on Oxford Street in London for their Project Earth initiative. Each display was created using recycled or sustainably sourced materials, while the vivid hues come from eco-friendly paints. Who knew brooms, baskets and hairbrushes could be such a visual delight?

The Colour Palace, 2019

Last summer, an explosion of colour appeared on the lawns outside Dulwich Picture Gallery in south-east London. The Colour Palace was a 10-metre-high, temporary pavilion, co-created with Pricegore architects for London Festival of Architecture. Its technicolour geometry was inspired both by fabric markets in Lagos and Sir John Soane’s historic design of the gallery.

Playland, 2019

When it comes to playgrounds, why should kids get all the fun? For Cannes Film Festival 2019, Ilori was commissioned by Pinterest to create Playland: an immersive installation designed to encourage adults to play, complete with seesaw and merry-go-round. For its playful palette, Ilori took his cue from Pinterest’s data sets about the website’s most pinned colours.

Parable

For the first biennial at Harewood House in 2019, Ilori presented chairs from his upcycled Parable collection, designed to give discarded furniture a new lease of life. ‘We have taken too much for granted for a long time,’ he told the exhibition curator Hugo MacDonald in Crafts magazine. ‘The amount that we throw away makes us feel uneasy and we are reconsidering what the life of objects can be.’