Eastern Orbit, London
Scream Gallery, London

20th May 2014

16 May–20 June 2014 · Scream Gallery, London

Eastern Orbit marked an important stage in Jacky Tsai’s exploration of traditional Chinese craftsmanship as a language for contemporary art. At Scream Gallery, London, works in lacquer carving, cloisonné, silk embroidery and hand-painted porcelain brought inherited skills into contact with the colour and energy of Pop Art.

A Picture Becomes a Crafted Object

The exhibition introduced Tsai’s lacquer carvings to his audience. His images acquired a physical depth: lines and ornamental forms could be read both as a composition and as a worked surface. The time invested in making became part of the encounter with the finished object.

Works including Floral Tibetan Skull, Cloisonné Skull and Long Live Socialism with Chinese Characteristics showed how a visual idea could change through its material. Rather than using traditional craft as decoration around a contemporary image, Tsai made the technique itself central to the work.

Nature, Mortality and Cultural Exchange

The skull provided a recurring point of connection. Flowers, branches and birds transformed a form associated with mortality into a living ornamental structure. Seen through different cultural traditions, the same image could evoke fear, beauty or renewal.

Elsewhere, comic-book energy entered Chinese pictorial settings. The works brought different histories of image-making into a shared space, asking viewers to follow their connections through humour and close observation.

Eastern Orbit established a material direction that would continue through Tsai’s later exhibitions: an image could move between a graphic composition and a meticulously crafted object, carrying contemporary stories through techniques passed between generations.

Read the contemporary exhibition announcement