14 May 1998: London“s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) held a reception last month to mark the opening of an exhibition featuring contemporary Chinese artists, entitled New Glass Art from China. Fift…
14 May 1998: London“s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) held a reception last month to mark the opening of an exhibition featuring contemporary Chinese artists, entitled New Glass Art from China. Fifteen contemporary glass sculptures by Loretta Yang of Taiwan“s New Workshop will be on display for the next six months. The reception also marked the museum“s decision to put two of Yang“s sculptures on permanent display; an exquisite green and yellow pumpkin box made with the pate-de-verre technique, and a pure white piece called “Flight of Buddha”. For Yang, a former Taiwan movie star who was awarded the best actress award in Taiwan“s golden horse festival for two consecutive years and also won the best actress prize in the Asian Pacific film festival, the exhibition was what she called another milestone in her struggle to find new territory in which to express herself after deciding to quit the movie industry at the peak of her career. Yang, along with her film director husband Chang Yi and five other friends, set up Taiwan“s first professional glass arts studio in 1987, with absolutely no idea they would one day revolutionize the glass industry on the island. Reports call her sculptures “distinctive”, often featuring her favourite images of Buddha and other Chinese motifs as found on ancient Chinese bronzes. Yang“s work has been exhibited in Asia, America and Europe, and in the words of critic Andrew Bolton, have succeeded in changing the traditional perception of glassmaking in China.