Designed in China
How do you change the perception of ‘made in China’ to ‘designed in China’? Chinese contemporary art is currently the focus of intense interest in western Europe, so why not Chinese design? Two exhibitions in London aim to rectify this. Unfolding Landscape, at Sotheby’s in London, which finished last week, exhibited work for sale by graduates from Beijing’s prestigious design school, The China Central Academy of Fine Arts.
Across town in west London, Liliane Fawcett has curated China Design Today at her Notting Hill gallery Themes and Variations. It features a number of commissions made in collaboration with Chinese designers of the post-Mao generation.
Fawcett has gathered designers that reveal very different approaches to what constitutes Chinese design. On her travels to China in search of designers she found a mix of avant-garde, computer-generated work that was almost rejecting its ancient Chinese roots and others who incorporates local Chinese traditions into their work.
China Design Today at her Notting Hill gallery Themes and Variations until December 8, 2012.
Read our review of Ai Weiwei’s Serpentine Pavilion here.
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While it is clearly positive to have publicity for Designed in China from many facets, but it’s also crucial that Designed in China is being defined as something entirely separate from Chinese Art. With much of Chinese art, it is making a splash because Westerners have never seen anything like it before. For Design in China, they’ve seen all the consumer products, fashion and architecture before, but it was all unoriginal and mass manufactured. For Designed in China, it’s not about making an appearance, it’s about changing the appearance.
Designed in China should not be a versatile, encompassing title. Made in China can never truly change to Designed in China if it is not something that happens on mass scale, rather than just at Sotheby’s exhibitions.