Renee So
Sunday 21 September 2025 – Sunday 8 March 2026new and existing works including a series of darkly playful objects, such as over-sized ceramic snuff bottles shaped like lemons, noses, or poppy seeds.
Opening Times
Tue – Sun: 10am-4.30pm
Mondays: Closed, except bank holidays
Galleries are open 10.30am – 4.30pm
Christmas Opening Hours
Christmas Eve: 10am – 3pm
Christmas Day: Closed
Boxing Day: Closed
27 – 29 Dec: Open as usual
New Years Eve: 10am – 3pm
New Years Day: Open as usual
About the
Exhibition
This solo exhibition by Renee So (b.1974) is the first to focus specifically on her relationship with Chinese history and identity.
Through a range of sculptural and ceramic work, the Hong Kong-born artist will consider the trade of goods and ideas between China and the West, and how perceptions of this history have been distorted and re-fashioned, largely by western preconceptions and orientalism. The exhibition showcases new and existing works by So, including her series of darkly playful objects, such as over-sized ceramic snuff bottles shaped like lemons, noses, or poppy seeds. Snuff bottles originated in the time of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and today can be found in the collections of many Western museums.
Visitors will also encounter a series of perfume bottles that caricature the shapes and titles used by familiar modern brands. With names such as Opium, Invasion and Poison, So is reminding us of historic trade relations between Britain and China during the 19th century and the brutal violence of the Opium Wars (1839-1860), questioning why luxury brands glamorise this history. So will also be unveiling a new series of anthropomorphised vessels which respond directly to the forms of the Li and the Ding, tripod ritual vessels found in Compton Verney’s own collection of Ancient Chinese ceramics and bronzes. Her forms also respond to plants, such as the finger lemon or Buddha’s Hand lemon, This unusual fruit captivated
historic Western collectors such Cassiano del Pozzo. Here, So interrogates the transfer and collection of knowledge and the cultural preconceptions that affect this.
The centrepiece of the exhibition will be a ‘magic mirror’, which is based on bronze mirrors that were popular during the Han (206 BC – 24 AD) and later Song (960-1279AD) Dynasties. These objects can project their surface imagery onto nearby walls and on So’s version the carved surface of the mirror depicts two women playing cuju – an ancient Chinese ballgame that predates football – upending received expectations about gender, sport and history.
