The work of London’s Zuza Mengham sits at the intersection of industrial design, sculpture, and traditional craft. Chosen by Tom Dixon as a Rising Talent at Maison & Objet, Mengham pushes material boundaries, tweaking familiar forms to create objects that look like something else entirely. Much of her work has a distinctive jewel-like quality.
Mengham’s work explores the join between the recovery of traditional crafts and the creation of her own new methods of making. From giant steel and neon chandeliers housing hanging plants to small geometric glassy sculptures, her work is seated within an atheistic of modernist abstraction.
Refusing labels, she does not describe herself as a designer or as an artist but pinpoints her interest in making ‘spaces’ out of sculptures or making sculptures that hint towards function.
OYSTER + MUSSEL
The Oyster and Mussel sculptural tables, Launched November 2017, are created using Jesmonite and Oyster or Mussel shells respectively. The tables offer a high buff finish revealing the natural shell inclusions and the sliced inner sheen of their iridescent Nacre layers. Each version uses a flecked and marbled casting to accentuate each species natural colors.
Shells have long been used as aggregates for building materials, poultry feed, crop farming acidity balancers, and offer a variety of historical and mythical narratives.
Working with popular London restaurant and fishmongers Sutton & Sons, the sculptural stools use shells kindly donated by the restaurant, creating a recycled and reused material to become the celebrated centerpiece within the work.
Tables are handmade and cast in our London studio, and also employ traditional chair caning techniques with custom made stainless steel frames. They are made to order at a limited edition of 10 each. If you are interested in a commissioning one of the series please feel free to email studio@zuzamengham.com with your enquiry.
AS ABOVE, SO BENEATH
The sculptures refer specifically to materials caught up in definitive crucial moments of catalysis in human history.
The series is comprised of six materials: Copper, Bronze, Iron, Slate, Marble, and Salt. All of these are sourced by means of one kind of excavation or another. They are tied to the earth and the excavation of the earth. They epitomize the accumulated layers of minerals that humans have tapped into, enabling bonds of significance between the landscapes of human history and the geology of the earth itself.
The way in which the resins are manufactured means they are shaped by a mould, cast and excavated again. As resin shrinks, the artist loosens the layers at a certain decisive point and the work has to be knocked back again, re-shaped, gouged out and unearthed, thus mirroring its natural gemstone or mineral counterparts.
PING PONG BAT
Resin cast ping pong bat made for The Art of Ping Pong charity auction 2017.
LABORATORY PERFUMES
Sculpting Scent was a project which focused on creating a visual representation of Laboratory Perfumes five fragrances: Amber, Gorse, Samphire, Tonka + Atlas.
For her Laboratory Perfumes project at the London Design Festival, Mengham imagined five perfumes as geometric sculptures.
To know more about Zuza Mengham click here.
