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| Red Gate |
This new sculpture, ‘Red Gate’ by Professor Guan Donghai 关东海 ,
on display in the Chinese Glass gallery, was donated by him to the Art
Gallery The castwork is one in a series called City Gates, exploring the
motif of the gates of ancient Chinese walled cities. It is in fact a
very valuable donation because many of his works sell for £I8,000 a
piece. Professor Guan often uses opaque
glass, worked to look like other materials such as jade or bronze. In
the piece he has donated, the gate appears to be fashioned from stone or
marble with a terracotta roof. Protruding heads arranged in a line
resemble ancient Chinese bronzes.
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| Kate checks the display and adds a label |
The gate is smeared in bright red powdered glass which lends it an
aura of foreboding. In order that the work can be viewed from 360
degrees in one of the Collection’s island cases, he experimented with a
new technique, casting each element of the design separately then
re-firing the parts to the kiln to fuse them together. The work was
fired a total of four times. The dimensions of Red Gate are height: 31
cm, width: 25 cm, depth: 13 cm.
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| Kate's assitant Willemijn admires the work |
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Prof Guan was unable to pay the cost of getting the object from Beijing
to Bristol. This is where The Friends stepped in, by paying the full
transport cost of £2,235.
