22nd April 2016

Resins to be cheerful: Zuza Mengham

Walking the tightrope between sculpture and design, Zuza Mengham is known for making large-scale steel sculptures that create an illusion of function – huge, angular forms that look like furniture but aren’t in any conventional sense. Recently, however, she’s started thinking smaller, turning her talent and attention to remarkable, gem-like resin sculptures and jewellery pieces that make use of innovative techniques to great eye-catching aesthetic effects. Visually, it’s a world away from steel, but in terms of process and material behaviour, it’s surprisingly similar – centred upon the idea of creating something formed and finished in a tiny window of creative opportunity.

We work with Zuza both in her role as a linchpin of the Chapman Brothers’ studio and shop, and as an artist herself. We asked her to talk about what she does, why she does it and what else she’d like to do. This is what she told us…

I make sculptural objects and installations. Most of my work started out of an interest in making ‘spaces’ out of sculptures or making sculptures that hinted towards function; objects that looked half-usable or like furniture. For instance, the chandelier-like Canopy is a large hanging steel construction made up of two levels with fitted neons and a hanging plant.

I spent my degree squirrelled away in the metal workshop, welding steel into sculptures as big as I could find space for (or not – I had to destroy a lot of them because they were so big). I then started making Meccano-like sculptures that could be flat-packed and reassembled – such as Ankle Divider, a fictitious furnishing at ankle height made of steel and using the traditional craft of chair caning, which you see on old modernist chairs (thus re-appropriating old traditional techniques in a new situation). On each side sat two plants, fenced off from one another.

My work has always been seated in a deep preoccupation with materials, how things work, why certain materials react the way they do, what you can create at a material’s point of volatility, fragility, and capturing the momentary. I think working in metal in the past was deeply tied in with these ideas. Steel needs to be manipulated quickly under immense heat, and you have a small window of time and then the outcome is very permanent. This same interest in this momentary point of permanency is also fundamental in the way I work with resin, which I started seriously experimenting with around a year ago.

The thing that makes the resin work really special is that they are so unique. Each one is made with a specially designed one-off mould. I try to employ various different ways of utilising the science of resin. Resin comes as a liquid and has to be catalysed to create the reaction it needs to harden into a solid state. If you catch the right moment as the resin starts to catalyse there are various effects you can create: making soft waves; introducing lots of tiny trapped air bubbles; creating glassy clearness, marbling and colour fades. The potential outcomes are endless.

I make a point of having air bubbles in my work. I like that there are no secrets, it offers itself and its process up freely and reminds you of the different material states it has evolved through. I think the reason I was previously drawn to metal was its deep tradition and the brief moment of malleability and its subsequent permanency. Whereas resin presents itself with permanency, but with very little tradition. I don’t feel as predisposed by imagery.

I’ve worked as an artist assistant and install technician for galleries for eight years. A big part of that was wanting to learn to make things with as many materials as possible, so that I could get to the point where materials and processes were in no way an obstacle, but an influence and motivation for exploration.

I’m now selling my resins at The The Store on Hackney Road. They are great there because they are really open to me making whatever I want and, more importantly with these, making each one unique.

My dream is to be able to make my work for as many different creative areas and industries as possible. I think it would be really interesting to see how my work sits in different situations and among different collaborations: set design, product launches, fashion accessories…

I would love to do a beautiful window display or play around with installation-based photography shoots – any situation that allows you to create a really immersive visual space, where the possibility of a narrative theme or exploration can be fully invested in. I would also like to make a series of lights at some point!