To accompany her work in The London Open 2018 exhibition, Renee So has produced a photopolymer etching. Sunset is a continuation of the artist’s exploration of the Bellarmine genre, specifically 17^th century German wine and ale stoneware jugs featuring the face of a bearded man. So playfully reduces her characters to containers for use; the human body as a vessel, the black boots as storage for feet.

Sunset, 2018, is based on a larger work of the same title, made of knitted fibres. A pair of legs is mirrored at a diagonal angle to create a reversible motif, compositionally inspired by the design of playing cards, appearing to be cartwheeling or high-kick dancing. The booted figures are part of a cast of sartorial characters that recur throughout So’s work. The rendering of her interchangeable characters in different craft materials, such as ceramic and textiles, underline their cartoon qualities and also the constructed nature of the world around us.

Renee So (born 1974 in Hong Kong) bestows both monumental grandeur but also caricatural qualities to the figures in her works, which weave together a pattern of cross-cultural references. Her fictional personas, borrow from ancient ritual masks, military and aristocratic portraiture. So’s work encompasses ceramic, prints, textiles and reliefs. So studied BA Fine Art at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne (1993-97). She lives and works in London.

Fifteen, Kate MacGarry, London, UK, 2017-18; Iconoclasts: Art Out of The Mainstream, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK, 2017-18; In Search of Miss Ruthless, ParaSite, Hong Kong, 2017; Renee So, Kate MacGarry, London, UK, 2016; Busts, David Noonan, Renee So, Runa Islam, Hopkinson Mossman, Auckland, New Zealand, 2015; Curated By Michael Marriott and Jesse Wine, Limoncello, London, UK, 2014; Conspiracy of Detail, GSA, Glasgow, UK, 2013; A Conspiracy of Detail, Mackintosh Museum, Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, UK, 2013.