In partnership with the Estate of Peter Chang and Glasgow Life Museums
As part of London Design Festival and the Mayfair Design District, Lyon & Turnbull is honoured to present More is More: The Magical World of Peter Chang, a major exhibition exploring the work of Peter Chang, a visual artist and colourist whose distinctive practice defied conventional boundaries.
Bringing together prints, jewellery, sculpture, drawings and archival material, the exhibition reveals the extraordinary visual language that connected Chang's work across disciplines. Part storyteller, part inventor, Chang drew inspiration from both the natural and manmade worlds, creating works that are at once sensual, playful and unexpected.
While he became internationally renowned for his radical jewellery, Chang saw himself first and foremost as a visual artist, for whom cross-disciplinary practice was essential. The exhibition traces his creative journey from printmaking and sculpture to the sculptural jewellery works for which he became renowned.
Influenced in part by Surrealism, he often began with familiar references before transforming them through visual puns, unexpected associations and imaginative leaps. Heraldry, sportswear, industrial design, mythology, Taoism, camouflage and mechanical forms all found their way into a body of work that was witty, enigmatic and deeply original.
Printmaking formed the foundation of Chang's understanding of colour. Long before plastics became central to his practice, he was exploring layered colour, abrasion and surface manipulation. Combined with his knowledge of Chinese lacquer-work, these investigations informed the remarkable techniques that later defined his sculpture and jewellery.
Colour is a language, and Chang had his own dialect. Throughout his work, colour became a means through which to explore contrast, texture and tactility. As Chang wrote in 1996, "I have a natural tendency to select, by various methods, colours which are high in volume, contrasting, complementary and contradictory."
Peter saw possibility where others saw waste. Working primarily in synthetic resins and plastics, Chang transformed overlooked and discarded materials into vibrant sculptural forms of remarkable intricacy and presence. Nothing was wasted. Toothbrush handles provided colours unavailable elsewhere; fragments of razors, industrial offcuts and found objects were collected, saved and repurposed.
We welcome visitors into Chang's world, where humour and invention sit alongside technical mastery. Drawing connections across his practice, the exhibition highlights the originality, wit and technical innovation that defined his work.
Developed in close collaboration with Peter's family, More is More offers a rare opportunity to encounter the breadth of the artist's work and the richly imaginative world he created: one where humour and invention sit alongside technical mastery, and where colour, surface and material combine to produce objects that are seductive, sensual and joyous.
Illustrated lead: Close up of Brooch, 1986 | © of Barbara Santos-Shaw Chang and Sons. Photography: Alex Robson.
