London craft fair features Chinese designer in new collective

A Chinese jewelry designer will showcase his work alongside some of the world's top craft makers at the Collect fair in London this week.

Zhang Sheng, who is based in the United Kingdom, is part of a new artist collective, known as Five, that will be exhibiting at the fair, using traditional materials and techniques to create contemporary ideas, with the theme Conversations in Silver and Metal.

Each maker applies contemporary ideas to traditional materials and techniques as a way to challenge the preconceptions and expectations of tradition, value, and the use of silver and fine metalwork.

Collect, now in its 18th year, is a fair focusing on collectable contemporary craft and design that takes place at London's Somerset House, along with a virtual fair.

Fair organizers say the event is unique as it exclusively offers expert work from panel-selected galleries and their artists, made in the past five years, by living makers.

Collectors will also have a chance to purchase unique pieces and some that have been created especially for the fair.

Zhang, an award-winning contemporary jewelry and silversmithing designer, has been influenced and inspired by minimalist art, contemporary architecture and geometrical form.

"This year, I return to the fair with a brand new collective, Five, (that) I formed with four other UK-based international silversmith artists ... I will showcase five sets of containers and vessels, including a set of new, larger sculptural objects, entitled Pyramid, that I have specially designed for the fair," Zhang said.

By exploring boundary, volume, silhouette, capacity, shadow, and subtle detail, Zhang's work focuses on the connection of internal and external, positive and negative space in his vessels and containers.

With his ethos of minimalism, Zhang produces an aesthetic of minimal style and purity of visual language.

His pieces also question the relationship between a work and its surroundings, as well as the role of function in a conceptual and aesthetic work of art.

"Collect… brings together art professionals, serious buyers, media, and key players in the industry and is one of the best international platforms to promote craft makers," Zhang said. "Thanks to Collect, the Victoria and Albert Museum and The Goldsmiths' Company discovered my work, and my piece has been permanently collected by world-class art institutes. It's very encouraging as the purchase happened only a few years after I graduated from the Edinburgh College of Art in 2018."

Each piece of Zhang's work is a result of a controlled and purposely-structured making process, using a blend of traditional metal skills with intermittent aid from digital technologies.

Along with Zhang, Five will also feature silversmiths Angela Cork, Jessica Jue, Ane Christensen, and Patrick Davison.

The group is hoping its collective work will spark passionate conversations about what contemporary silver and metalwork can be.

Isobel Dennis, Collect fair director, said: "Collect is such a powerful, established force for facilitating the discovery of exceptional contemporary craft through its international galleries and artists. With online art, craft, and design sales booming during 2020 and 2021, the appetite for contemporary craft is at an all-time high."