New sculpture in London's Chinatown
The Lion, Hsiao-Chi Tsai and Kimiya Yoshikawa, perspex, jesmonite, treated steel, 2009
The Lion, a colourful new public sculpture commission has recently been installed in London’s Chinatown
The Lion is a collaborative work by Taiwanese Hsiao-Chi Tsai and Japanese Kimiya Yoshikawa and was commissioned by Chinatown Arts Space and Shaftesbury PLC to mark the entrance to Chinatown. The design brief was ‘to reflect both the heritage and contemporary East Asian dynamism of Chinatown’ and so it’s no surprise that the sculpture is based on the form of the Chinese temple lion. The two have taken this traditional animal – which in Chinese art looks more like a Pekinese dog than the lean hunting machine of the African plains – and given it a colourful, 21st-century makeover. Approximately 3m high, the sculpture’s made out of thousands of pieces of laser-cut Perspex, jesmonite and steel, and it’s shaggy body is a startling day-glo orange and red, while its tail and mane are green and its snarling head a pristine white.
Hsiao-Chi Tsai and Kimiya Yoshikawa both graduated from the RCA in 2006 and have since then worked on a number of collaborative projects including Futuristic Flowers, an eye-catching window display of giant tryphid-like forms for Harvey Nichols in 2007. They are currently working together on a public sculpture for Catford Town centre.
