Eastern Exchanges @ Manchester Art Gallery
The scale and scope of Eastern Exchanges is imposing, with three vast galleries filled with quintessential East Asian works of craft, art, fabric and built structure, curated to delve deep into the historical artistry of China, Japan and Korea. As an opening to the exhibition, the viewer encounters two towering centrepieces: an example of an early 19th-century lacquer Norimono chair (the traditional Japanese sedan chairs that once were carried on the shoulders of affluent men's servants), and a contemporary work by Felicity Aylieff entitled Chinese Ladder (2007) – a colossal tower (or giant pot) made up of large, stacked porcelain slabs shaded blue and white, which was made in collaboration with factories in Jingdezhen, China
The exhibition is arranged into loose sections. The first, entitled Distinctively Eastern, deals predominantly with 18th-century objects and artefacts. An Imari dish, lightly coloured with images of Buddha, was oddly paired with Danful Yang's modern and unshakably delicate porcelain kitsch creatures from the Girly series (2010). Here also we see the inclusion of the Chinese imperial dragon robes – one striking with its prominent yellow background foregrounding the emblematic dragon, denoting power and grace; the other a deep orange shawl fit for a prince. These items suggested narratives within East Asia's ecclesiastical evolution and, like much else in this ‘chapter’ of the exhibition, were complex in history and custom.
Trade between Britain and China developed within the 1600s and this caucus of kingdoms prompted a revision of how East Asian crafts were constructed. This story is told here under the umbrella title of East Meets West. Work includes the famille rose Vase – an infusion of Chinese Taoist philosophy and the British penchant for landscapes and gardening. Elsewhere, Lei Xue's tea trinkets (2001-3), made from porcelain and forged to symbolise crushed cans in the traditional blues and whites, bridge the gap between the high craft of hand-painted pottery with the throwaway soda cans of our modern age.
Isolated due to political and trading endeavours until the early 20th Century, there is an unresolved allure to the art of Korea. It was only in the late 1880s that the country was forced by Japan to open up trade with the wider world. This narrative is explored in the exhibition’s final chapter, Future East. The Sanggam practices of etching motifs upon dry clay and filling this with black and white slip are evident throughout the exhibition's contemporary works, but many challenge this notion and favour a pared down minimalistic approach such as Jung Hong Park's uncomplicated vases Red Room Vessels (2014). The distorted Water Drop Vessel by Ka Jin Lee and Fumio Enomoto's traditional weave stool demonstrate the simplicity that is present throughout much of recent East Asian craft.
On the whole, Eastern Exchanges delivers on its promise and presents a fragmented journey entangled and embellished with a staggering depth of relativity and poignancy. Much like the expedition through the centuries, however, certain aspects still remain elusive.