ANDREE COOKE is a curator and commissioner of contemporary art and design. She has produced some significant collections of work by designers Tord Boonjte, El Ultimo Grito, Studio Makkink & Bey, Hussein Chalayan and Susan Cianciolo, and key artists commissions by Lawrence Weiner, Mat Collishaw, Peter Friedl, Nigel Cooke, George Shaw, Gillian Wearing, Linder, Ming Wong and Liam Gillick.

In 1993 she founded The British Council Window Gallery, in Prague, which she closed in 2003. During this period her new commissions received global critical acclaim and recognition. The artists commissions she developed now belong to prominent international public and private collections including The Saatchi Collection, Arts Council Collection, and several new pieces including those by Liam Gillick and Gillian Wearing formed part of their Tate Turner Prize exhibitions.

Andree Cooke broke new ground in championing the combination of contemporary art and design curation, focusing on the ‘cross-over’ in these disciplines giving Hussein Chalayan, Dunne & Raby and Michael Anastassiades their first solo exhibitions, providing the platform for their experimental work.

In the mid 2000s she was appointed to launch the gallery, Spring Projects in London. The design duo El Ultimo Grito, who she worked with and commissioned in 2012, won them the London Design Medal, a prize awarded by London Design Festival to a studio deemed to have made a significant contribution to design; A prize previously won by Zaha Hadid, Thomas Heatherwick and Ron Arad.

She has placed some of El Ultimo Grito’s work in international art collections from the Shanghai Museum of Glass, Shanghai, to Museum of Arts & Design New York(USA), MoMA, New York (USA) and the Victoria & Albert Museum Collection, London (UK).

At Spring Projects she commissioned artists, fashion photographers and designers such as Sølve Sundsbø, Mat Collishaw, Jaime Hayon and Studio Makkink & Bey. Her relationship with Spring Studios led to the development of their art and design collection and her furnishing their new New York premises in Tribeca, New York City. 

As director of David Gill Galleries St James’s (over the course of 2012), she worked with numerous designers including Zaha Hadid, Mattia Bonetti and Gaetano Pesce.

Her independent projects include the curation of sections at two biennales in Lisbon (Experimenta) and in Stoke-on-Trent (British Ceramics Biennal), a selector for The Whitechapel Open; and co-curation of Barnaby Barford’s touring retrospective that originated at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia, USA. She has curated national exhibitions at the South Bank Centre, Chisenhale Studios, South London Gallery and the Roundhouse as well as internationally in Shanghai, New York and Prague.