Happy Lunar New Year! The 29th of January 2025 marks the first day of the New Year in the lunisolar Chinese calendar, celebrating the end of Winter and the beginning of Spring. 2025 is the year of the Wood Snake. We wanted to mark the occasion by curating a selection of works in the traditional colour of red - symbolic of good luck, prosperity and good fortune.
To celebrate the Lunar New Year we are offering 10% off on our website and in the gallery. To redeem, enter code WOODSNAKE at checkout or ask us in the gallery.
Offer ends Sunday 2nd Feb at midnight.
In the spirit of the year of the wood snake, Mother Dearest by Carl Fox employs a snake motif, used to explore themes of self and queer identity in relation to the family unit and the hidden complexities of the coming out experience. The piece features abstraction through block work. Combining Carl's traditional grid work with Rosanna Bishop's screen printed elements, Mother Dearest uses colour and materiality combined with symbolism to connect the viewer to the piece. The makers invite the viewer to intuitively translate the work to their own experience.
Welcome the start of Spring with Sheng Zhang's jewellery in rose gold. Zhang's designs are influenced by minimalist art, contemporary architecture and geometrical form. Associating with boundary, volume, silhouette, capacity, shadow and subtle detail, his practice concentrates on exploring the connection of internal and external, positive and negative space in his vessels and containers.
Jane Adam's jewellery in lustrous red and gold colours is the perfect choice for New Year celebrations. Adam pushes her materials to their limits to explore their inherent qualities, such as how a metal tears or gains texture under stress, or the way a scratched line changes its physical character when it is stretched or compressed. Such free thinking allows unexpected outcomes to be appreciated and exploited for their intrinsic textural or visual beauty.
Taking her cue from her love of traveling, Ruth Shelley’s inspiration derives from her observation of colour, balance and tone in nature. Her gravity dropped vessels create an interplay of light, form and colour that is evocative of the natural world which surrounds us. This series of work revisits her background in textiles, concentrating on Ikat Weave and knitting patterns. Owing to the nature of the applications, Shelley’s vessels are one-offs. It is not possible to make two identical pieces.
Robyn Hardyman's wheel-thrown vessels in deep reds make beautiful decorative and functional pieces for the home. The pieces are finely thrown in pared-back, elegant forms. She is inspired by porcelain’s combination of delicacy and strength, to create pieces that evoke a sense of balance and harmony, and that invite contemplation. Surface decoration is minimal – an incised line around a narrow foot, or a slip decoration to add a dynamic to the stillness of a moon jar.
Rachel Brown's jewellery with a signature red highlight explores the beautiful tonal qualities of graphite pencils and powder on the surface of white enamel. Rachel is a self-confessed doodler and mark maker inspired by the textures and repetitive patterns found in everyday mundane things. Her design process always starts with a drawn pattern or texture and the jewellery design develops from this. She loves the way a pencil line can express emotions, from a chaotic spontaneous scribble to a more considered and deliberate repetitive pattern.
Work by Carl Fox, Sheng Zhang, Jane Adam, Ruth Shelley, Robyn Hardyman and Rachel Brown is on show in our Marylebone gallery and available online at caagallery.org.uk/
