Conversations | Riya Patel, Curator and Editor

Riya Patel is a writer, editor and curator with a background in architecture and design. She is currently the curator of The Aram Gallery, an independent gallery dedicated to new and experimental design. Besides curating, she also writes for and edits several publications on design, including Disegno, Wallpaper and The Independent. Patel pursued a Masters degree in Architecture from Cardiff University and worked as an architectural assistant before joining the world of journalism.

The Beginnings

I grew up in Croydon, a suburb of London. My parents moved here about forty years ago. Coming from a big family of doctors, I was never interested in the arts as such. I had never done anything with design or architecture, apart from studying design and technology in secondary school. I was good at a mix of the arts and the sciences, and went on to study architecture -- but without any idea of what architecture is really like. It's one of those things that you can't know about, until you do it.

Architecture is a broad subject that gives you a good base in lots of things -- not just design -- but also the environment, economics, politics, and philosophy too. I was very receptive, and the course taught me to be critical.  I got two degrees in architecture, and then worked at a couple of architecture offices in London. Around the time of the recession, I decided to change gear. I did an internship at the Architects’ Journal, and that kind of brought me into journalism, and from there the gallery happened.

The Aram Gallery

I have been involved with the gallery for four and a half years. It was established in 2002. The pace of work has been very fast. In such a  short span, we have done twenty-two shows, which sounds like a lot. But they were all very temporary, and designed to be quite accessible and fun. There's always something fresh happening at the gallery. Our visitors will always discover something new here. Our work fits somewhere in between a commercial gallery and a museum.

Media and curation

The architecture and design field is very exciting, because there are lots of opportunities to move around and experiment. At the same time, there are massive misconceptions about design. There’s an understanding that design is a luxury, whereas in reality, it comprises everything that all of us use every day. The gallery aims to be accessible to everyone; anyone can walk in and learn something about design or ask a question. We are not trying to keep anyone out. We have a completely different approach towards showcasing design.

Making design accessible

The design scene in London and the UK is still very closed, because we don't have a lot of manufacturing here. In Italy and Scandinavia, the general population has a better understanding of design because they probably grew up with the kind of industrial designs that are collected by museums -- you know what I mean? They may be industrial in nature, but are very, very well thought out. And these countries have always valued design highly. They have had this ingrained idea that if you pay more for something, it will last you a long time. Or it might work very well for you, that something well-made is worth having, and you might pass it on to your children at the end of your life. It’s a concept that I certainly did not have while growing up. 

Maybe it's true to say of the UK in general that we don't value design in the same way that other countries do. And then it's also to do with this idea that we see architecture and design as luxuries. Design is actually everything we use; there’s nothing mystical in this way of looking at it. I think that galleries and museums are very important in communicating this, but having said that, a gallery or a museum is itself a barrier for so many people. A big temple-like space in a city centre can turn some people off. It’s simply not on a lot of people’s radars in the way art or fashion is. 

So I’m interested in this gap between how design is perceived, and what it is, really. It’s something that we have to reckon with. I always work with this awareness. London has just had a design festival where, rather than talking to a wide audience, there’s been a lot of showing and having conversations with each other. I think we need all these things -- to talk and show and have conversations -- and these ideas could and should be made to reach more people.

Travel to India

My first big trip to India was for a wedding. I again visited two years ago for some travelling. I don’t have a lot of relatives in India as my parents had moved to the UK via East Africa. My father grew up in Uganda, my mother in Tanzania, and my grandparents also moved to London after my parents came. 

In the talk (held during the London Design Festival at the Delfina Foundation), I was discussing re-use, which is always on my mind, and is a part of my identity, I would say. The gallery uses the same furniture for pretty much each show, because it's kind of wasteful to be doing five exhibitions a year and building something each time. So yeah, I do have a natural resistance to wasting things; this may be very topical now, but for me, I've grown up with it. I think that definitely comes from an Indian sense of design and resourcefulness -- maybe not so much from designing, as that often relates to making new things -- but from how you put to use a lot of the stuff around you. You can often make what you need from what’s around; you don't always need to be going out to buy stuff. This belief and way of working is definitely a legacy of my family. 

Identity and material culture

I moved into my own house two years ago, and that was the first time I really started  thinking about how my living space can reflect who I am. I have a beautiful bedspread that my mother brought back from India. It has a texture and a smell that’s very reminiscent of big gatherings, of sitting on the floor of my parents’ house, on mattresses laid out across the whole living room. That really is something that touches me, and evokes a lot of things for me. 

And of course, I’ve collected a lot of Indian utensils and cooking vesselss as well. I love those Indian shops where you see products specific to our culture, and to making certain foods. For instance, those beautiful, thin rolling pins for making roti. In the UK, a rolling pin is a thick and fat cylinder. The Indian version is this incredible tapering object. 

There are definitely more Indian things that I want to include in my home. On my last trip, I made it a point to consciously observe the way crafts exist in India. There is usually a local person who still has the expertise to make so many things that we just buy here -- without much thought -- something shipped from a warehouse somewhere. In India, it's literally so local and personal; there's still such knowledge around making -- and all these ideas  of time and patience, and all the things which we’ve kind of lost. This is something from my trip to India which really excited me. 

I travelled mostly in Rajasthan, and visited Chandigarh to see Le Corbusier’s work. In Chandigarh, we saw the famous municipal buildings and also the general housing that makes up most of the city. Modern design in Europe, and especially architecture by Le Corbusier, is kind of hallowed. Buildings are protected and preserved like museums. It was refreshing to see the buildings in Chandigarh being used, and having a life. And that there was no sense of preciousness always enveloping these buildings and making them inaccessible. In the main reception located in the courthouse building, instead of modernist chairs, there were some kitschy white leather sofas . And I just loved that, because that's clearly what people prefer to sit on and use every day.

Cultural IP and cultural appropriation

It’s really, really tricky. I always feel that if you're not an expert on something, you shouldn’t really attempt it. Lots of people look to me to bring Indian design to the forefront in my work, because I'm Indian, and therefore they expect that I should be doing certain things. But I think that it would be quite inauthentic for me to do something that I don't know enough about. I am happier to collaborate and use my platform to introduce expert voices that may not otherwise get heard enough. 

I did an exhibition in 2017 with the British Council and the Royal College of Art, about textiles from Vietnam and Thailand. Some students went on a trip to those countries and presented an idea of how craft is changing, and whether the next generation is interested in taking up crafts, or in going to university and getting out of the loop. These students had to live and work with people from the textile and craft industries, and they only had a month to do it. They found it so incredibly hard to have an opinion on something that they had just been transplanted into, rather than taking the time to understand it from the inside out. So I feel really cautious about making observations about a culture that I don't truly come from. My experience has been of being in between two cultures, which brings its own kind of richness. 

Again, the question with that exhibition was, who is this really for? Those students were going off to Vietnam and Thailand and bringing back textiles for us in the West to look at. For me, there was something uncomfortable about that. But then obviously, we have to think of the bigger picture. We have to find ways of moving the conversation forward, and without an exhibition, how do we find out about global issues? 

A year later, we did an exhibition with a group of designers from Uruguay, led by Matteo Fogale, a Uruguayan-Italian designer based in the UK. Uruguay is a tiny country with hardly any design manufacturing, but with a lot of knowledge of craft. These designers were very happy to do an exhibition in London, because how else would they communicate what was going on in their part of the world? The effort has to be made, but I think that it has to come from the right person -- from a passionate person who really has something to say. 

Sustainability

I try to introduce sustainable values to the gallery wherever I can. At the end of an exhibition on climate change with Disegno magazine, we announced a giveaway of the birch plywood used for the exhibition design. Students and designers came and took it and did whatever they wanted to do with it. It was quite a good way of reusing things, but I genuinely feel that the best and the most sensible thing to do is not to build anything, you know, and use what you have. The gallery space has beautiful natural light and lovely wooden floors. It’s an old London warehouse, and you don’t need to do very much to it. Just put six objects on the floor and that's the exhibition. Whatever the budget, that's all one really needs to do. 

It makes sense, right? How can you talk about the environment and then also, at the same time, be using raw materials for a show lasting a matter of weeks? You just have to think: do I really need this? Does this exhibition really need it? And when I do need something, there is a very handy site called ‘museum freecycle’. It’s like an eBay for museums.  Plinths and display furniture are put online when no longer in need, and another museum or gallery can request it. 

‘Made in India’

I think people here don’t know enough about it. There’s knowledge about fabrics and fashion, obviously -- that has a huge recognition --but not so much about design and products. 

There was a huge exhibition at the V&A called Fabric of India, where I learned something new about the beauty of things that people still create with their hands. I think that a lot of people find it amazing that in India, clothes are mostly tailored to your size. This is seen as a luxury here. The sizing system here doesn’t really work, because most people don’t necessarily fit into a preconceived 8, 10 or 12. Who decided in the first place what those standard sizes should be!? You might be an 8 in one shop, and a 10 in another. India solves this problem by just making all your clothes to size! Of course, it’s got a lot to do with the costs, and how we value skill. It's still cheaper to get your clothes fitted for you in India. So I think we have to acknowledge the supremacy of ‘Made in India’, particularly in textiles and clothing. 

I'm not sure that objects have the same recognition yet. And I don't think most people know enough about the kind of things that people have in India, like those beautiful stainless steel bowls. We don't use steel in this country to eat from, because there’s a feeling that it's ‘cold’. But it's actually a very good material. It adds no taste to your food and is obviously much better than plastic. 

Material and design culture comes from general culture and the way people live. The UK lives in a certain way and it's yet to appreciate how India really lives, and why certain materials and practices are used there which aren't used here.

For instance, multi-generational living. It’s common for Indian people across generations to live in one house. Because we are facing a huge housing crisis here, people are starting to embrace the idea of co-living. But this is still seen as kind of radical and different. Multi-generational living is a system that could work really well here if people could adapt their minds to it. Here the pressure of affording childcare and social care for the elderly takes a toll on people in their mid-lives. But in India, it’s common for grandparents to care for grandchildren at home under one roof.