Rowena's House Warming

As part of LDF 2025, Rowena Liangru Lu will present her new works from 2024-2025 in exhibition: Rowena’s Housewarming, hosted in her home / studio on Hester Road, upstairs of Royal College of Art (Battersea). Well, it is an exhibition, and an actual Housewarming (relatively quiet) Party. The main body of works comes from Serious Play, a furniture and home accessory series she began in 2022 and has since developed into a personal language of material and form. As Rowena reflected in 2022: “… After moving my ‘beads lab’ from RCA to home, I grabbed whatever I had that could be used as moulds: wok, pan, baking tray, chair legs, lamp shades, coke cans, wine bottles… I borrowed shapes from them as if borrowing part of their soul — as if preserving fragments of my daily life.” The obsession with casting beads on daily objects lasted. Since 2024, Rowena has considered this way of making she invented as a new craft, with what she calls the very “natural” materials of 21st century: plastic. With this mindset, Rowena started to borrow tools and techniques often used in well-established crafts, like ceramics and glassmaking, to expand the potential of plastic beads crafting. No work is born out of the blue. Here, you will see not only Rowena's new furniture and paintings, but also the tools and materials she uses, the sketches she draws, the books she reads, the food she eats, the music she listens to — connecting points from her daily life to her creation. Here, you will see the works in the exact setting where they accompany artist’s daily life. After all, speaking about showing furniture pieces, is there anywhere better than showing it at the actual home? After all, where else should furniture live, if not in a home? ………………………………………………………………………………………… About Living Room: Rowena has long been playing with the line between private and public space. In 2021, inspired by Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, she co-founded Museum Room with her family. As part of Museum Room, Living Room is an art & design salon that brings people together through conversation-driven events — from seminars and workshops to film screenings, all within the realms of art, design, and craft. Rowena’s Housewarming marks the launch of Living Room, with many more events to come. Save the booking page and stay tuned! Appointment via: https://rowena.me/ Shop: https://rowena.me/shoproom