Coded Colours by Jane Adam and Yi Zhao

中文版 - Chinese version      

Artist list

Jane Adam, Yi Zhao

Last night the wind blew hard and rain was fine.
Sound sleep did not dispel the aftertaste of wine.
I ask the maid rolling up the screen.
"The same crabapple tree," she says, "was seen."
"But don't you know, O don't you know."
“The red should languish and the green must grow.”
 
Song Dynasty poetess Li Qingzhao expressed the love for spring flowers by asking the crabapple tree after a hangover in this fresh and meaningful poet. The last two sentences, “But don't you know, O don't you know. The red should languish and the green must grow.” She said both like to the maid and to herself. It was the colour Li saw that reminded her of the images, and showed a kind of emotion and mood. This poem from Song Dynasty, is by no means being put aside in a sense of history. Its famous sentences "Don't you know the red should languish and the green must grow" was used as the name of a popular TV series. The connection of colour and abstract thought is not only familiar to us, but also to many artists who use contemporary jewelry as a medium of expression. They are willing to discover, explore, think and express the intellectual connotation of colour. So, we held this duo exhibition of Jane Adam and Yi Zhao.
 
Jane Adam and Yi Zhao, are two artists who have a unique style for the colour of jewelry appearance in the UK and China. Jane Adam devoted herself to the experiments and innovations of anodized aluminum in the past three decades. She developed a distinctive process for dyeing, printing and texture making. Also, Yi Zhao is obsessed with the colour sense of lacquer since 2016. She created a series of masterpieces full of temperature by studying the relationship between lacquer and wooden texture. Both their works present the beauty of the “Coded Colour”. However, we would like you to see more differences and resonances between the two artists, due to the cultures and personal expressions.
 
The most obvious resonance is the colourfulness presented by the works as materials. Through the mutual support of colour and texture, the works have aroused the audiences’ “questionings” and the artists’ poetic self-talks. Both artists shared the power of creating with the material in the process of creation. Jane Adam once said that instead of preconceivingly imposing her ideas on the materials, she provided a set of conditions for them to evolve on their own. While Yi Zhao had the similar feeling, she said that the paint of the lacquer is hard to control because it’s breathing in the air. We can see that, speaking of the visual nature and the process of creation, the two artists have a tacit understanding although they live in the opposite side of the continent.
 
When it comes to differences, the first thing we can think of is the different development trajectories of the two cultures. Beginning in the early 1960s, western jewelry artists began to respond to modernist design principles by using industrial materials and simple curves rather than precious metals as a means of subversive innovation and value reconstruction. The aluminum material applied by Jane Adam emerged in this context. As a Chinese artist, Yi Zhao didn’t choose such a "negative" approach to innovation. Instead, she made great efforts to update traditional medium and built a dynamic and positive connection between traditional culture and contemporary personal life. As Mr. Qiao Shiguang said, if the traditional lacquer art does not develop, and is collected into the museum, it is "suicide". But if one uses other materials to replace lacquer in the development of lacquer art, it is "homicide". And from the micro perspective, many works of Jane Adam discussed the motif of formal aesthetics such as "irregularity" and "symmetry". She seemed to be trying to tell an “old” new story. In Yi Zhao's works, much of the narrative comes from her personal experiences. She made use of the material properties of lacquer to create a new old meaning, or to tell a "new" old story. Therefore, from the macro culture to the micro creative methods, they have different ideas regardless of their tacit understanding.
 
Of course, we hope that audience can inspire their own feelings through the exhibition.

After all, the words can not be comprehensive, let’s sink into silence. Silence is all about the coded colours in this exhibition.


Opening hours:
22 May - 27 June,  11 am - 6 pm (Gallery closed on Monday and Wednesday).