Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, The Jewellery and Metals Studio at The Legnica SILVER Festival

Artist list

Bifei Cao, Xiang Cheng, Shannon Guo, Shifa Hu, Leo Jia, Fang Wei Li, Sang Li, Qingxin Liu, Xiaochen Liu, Zhong Quan Lv, Molly Ning, Yike Su, Yi Ping Sun, Joyce Xu, Ruyu Yan, Wendi Zhang, Zhiwen Zheng

Legnica SILVER Festival is one of the largest exhibitions in Europe that showcases, promotes and documents artistic jewelry in a broad sense. It is a specialized field that intersects with art, craft, and design. About 1,000 pieces of jewelry and design works by more than 500 artists from dozens of countries originating from over five continents were displayed at the festival this year. Fourteen unique exhibitions of artistic jewelry, posters, photography and animation were displayed at over seven locations in the center of town.
 
Since 2001, two jewelry schools around the world have been selected as representatives of institutions each year during the exhibition, to display the artistic achievements and styles of young contemporary jewelry artists, and to encourage and inspire more outstanding jewelry creations. The Jewelry and Metals Studio of Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts participated in the exhibition as one of those two institutions this year. The exhibition was co-curated by Norman Cherry, Honorary Professor of the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, Shannon Guo, Associate Professor, Director of the Jewelry and Metals Studio, and Legnica Gallery, Poland, with seventeen participating artists—all teachers and students from the Jewelry and Metals Studio of the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts.
 

I made my first visit to China more than twenty years ago to speak at a conference at the University of Geological Sciences in Wuhan, followed soon after by participation on the judging panel of a national jewellery design competition in Beijing. At that time I was Head of the Birmingham School of Jewellery and we had only recently begun accepting students from mainland China, starting in 1997 with one solitary soul. There had been a longstanding tradition of receiving applications from students in Hong Kong and Taiwan so this had been a major departure: quite how major no one realised at the time. That one student ultimately led to several hundreds, if not thousands, over the intervening years.
 
As students graduated and returned home, the value of their Western qualifications resulted in good jobs, successful careers as designers, artists and educators and, inevitably, more students choosing to study in many institutions all over the West. I continued to visit China regularly and, with the freedom gained by leaving the academic world, was able up until the “Covid Years” to make as many as four or five trips a year carrying out duties as visiting professor, competition judge, etc. Delivering masterclasses has been a particular joy, offering as it does the opportunity to get to know students in depth, understand more about the Chinese approach to the creative process, and learn more about how Chinese society functions.
 
Over this period I have observed a surprisingly quick maturing of our field and been impressed by the quality of work now being created across the country. Thus I was happy to recommend to Legnica this exhibition of recent work by staff and graduates of the jewellery department of the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts in the University of Shanghai. It was a great pleasure to work with Professor Guo Xin in an advisory capacity and to know that the work was so well received in Poland, the first time that a Chinese institution had exhibited in the Silver Schools section of the annual Festival of Silver.
/ Norman Cherry, Honorary Professor of Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts