2 October 2026
Artist Highlight - Seren Cheng
Interview and Review
Seren Cheng is a London-based jewellery artist currently studying MA Jewellery & Metal at the Royal College of Art, having graduated with First-Class Honours from London College of Fashion.
Her practice centres on how matter can be read and translated in a relational way. Through
making, she explores the narrative qualities inherent in materials, and how crafted forms
participate in reshaping perception and experience. Her current research examines how jewellery can contribute to a direct and accessible form of artistic expression, using simple forms to communicate effectively with people.
ARTIST INTERVIEW
1. Door handles, lift buttons and similar objects are usually treated as background. What made them emotionally significant for you?
Objects such as door handles and buttons are designed and manufactured to accommodate human use as conveniently as possible. When I interact with them, I am touching forms that have been carefully shaped in service of people. Through them, I sense a kind of mediated humanity. The engineering and design embedded within these objects create a comfortable distance between myself and others, allowing me to connect with human presence indirectly through the object.
2. You mention turning your attention to objects when you feel nervous in crowds. How did that private habit become a starting point for jewellery?
This was not actually the starting point of the collection. It was only after I had begun making the jewellery that I realised I had been using this way of looking at objects to ease my nervousness in crowded situations.
My interest in industrial components and their structures felt very natural to me, and before starting the project I had not consciously reflected on why I was drawn to them. The process of making the jewellery prompted me to think more deeply about these tendencies and experiences. In that sense, the work became a way of developing a greater awareness of myself and understanding the role these objects had been playing in my life.
3. The work transforms transitional architecture into wearable pieces. What changes when something public, fixed and functional becomes intimate and worn?
What changes is my awareness of the space. In everyday life, we interact with architectural elements in order to fulfil a need, whether that is opening a door or reaching another floor. Our attention is directed towards the destination rather than the space itself, and the presence of the space is often taken for granted.
By transforming these elements into jewellery, I retell them through a different language. Jewellery's ability to carry personal meaning lends these objects an additional emotional significance. This shift encourages me to approach the space more consciously, to observe it, and to notice the traces of human activity embedded within it. Through this act of attention, I become more aware of the space itself and of the ways it continually supports and guides my movements through it.
4. Your practice often looks at relationships beyond direct human interaction. What kind of relationship do you think exists between a person and an object they touch every day?
As I mentioned earlier, objects are a medium through which I experience human activity and production. The objects we touch every day carry traces of our lives, recording repeated gestures and encounters over time.
At the same time, they also reveal the qualities of their materials. Metal accumulates scratches, while wood gradually becomes smoother through touch. These marks are both traces of human presence and expressions of the material itself.
For me, the relationship between a person and an everyday object is one of mutual influence. We leave traces on objects, while materials respond to our presence in different ways. These interactions remind me that I am not an isolated individual, but part of a larger network of relationships, both within human society and the wider natural world.
5. Jewellery is usually associated with adornment, but here it also acts like a fragment of the built environment. Do you want the pieces to feel decorative, architectural, or somewhere in between?
For me, beauty is a primary aspect of jewellery, and one of its important functions. I want the pieces to attract attention and encourage people to recall or reconsider their own experiences of interacting with space. In that sense, an aesthetically satisfying form is necessary.
The term ‘decorative’ is often understood as the opposite of ‘functional’, but in my work decoration is part of the function. The visual appeal of the pieces draws people in and creates the possibility for reflection.
As for their architectural quality, it comes from my choice to reference the points where people most directly encounter the built environment. The architectural language is therefore a consequence of the source material rather than the original aim of the work.
6. What would you like people to feel the next time they press a button, hold a rail or push a door open?
If the work encourages someone to pay attention to these small interactions and reconsider their relationship with the space around them, then it has achieved its purpose. Even a brief awareness that these interactions exist, and that we are constantly being supported and guided by our surroundings, would be meaningful to me.
BORROWED FROM THE BUILDING
Review by Sara Chyan, Curator
Seren Cheng takes details from architecture and puts them against the body. Keyholes, handles and other fittings are enlarged, polished and remade as jewellery. On a door or wall, these forms are so familiar that we usually use them without looking. Once worn, they become much harder to ignore.
The keyhole piece is the most literal. Its polished oval surface and cut-out centre make the source immediately obvious. I understand its place in the collection, although there is not much uncertainty once you recognise it. The curved arm pieces hold my attention for longer. They follow the upper arm like sections of hardware that have been taken out of a building before anyone decided exactly what they should become.
Visible screws and joints help. They keep the pieces close to manufactured fittings rather than letting them become completely conventional jewellery. Against skin, that engineering feels slightly out of place. The metal was designed around human use, but here the relationship has changed. Instead of the hand reaching briefly for an object, the object stays with the body.
This becomes clearest in the photographs where a chain connects the wearer to a fitting fixed on the wall. The gesture is simple, but slightly uncomfortable. For a moment, the person appears tethered to the architecture around them rather than simply passing through it.
Seren talks about everyday objects carrying scratches and other traces left by repeated contact. Her jewellery does something slightly different. These surfaces are highly polished, almost removing the wear she finds interesting in the originals. I do not think that weakens the work, but it changes the emphasis. She is preserving the shape of these encounters rather than their physical history.
Seren only recognised later that paying attention to objects had helped her deal with nervousness in crowded spaces; it was not the original reason for making the collection. I like that this connection came afterwards. It keeps the work from becoming an illustration of anxiety and leaves more room for the objects themselves.
The pieces made me notice how carefully buildings are designed around small movements of the body. A handle already expects a hand. Seren changes that relationship just enough for something normally passed over to become noticeable again.