Albert Yonathan Setyawan - Metamorphic Modulation

Albert Yonathan Setyawan has a ceramic installation, Metamorphic Modulation, on view at the V&A South Kensington this weekend. It's in Sculpture, Room 21a, and it's free to see.

The piece is built around two enigmatic forms—one evoking a leaf, the other a flower—and it's made up of more than 700 individual pieces, each hand-modelled in clay and slip-cast in red terracotta. Setyawan left them unglazed, so the red terracotta is exactly what you're seeing, and the way the pieces are arranged means the whole thing shifts as you move around it, playing with light and shadow. It's a study in repetition and pattern-making, and Setyawan describes it as an exploration of form and the ambiguity of perception, underpinned by his conceptual work with meditative experiences. His practice in contemporary ceramic art works with repeating forms and the material qualities of clay, and you can see that here in the sheer number of pieces that come together to make the two shapes.

It didn't start in London, though. Metamorphic Modulation was commissioned in partnership with The Peninsula Hotels' 'Art in Resonance' programme and was first shown in Hong Kong before being adapted for the V&A. It was curated by Louis Copplestone in collaboration with Carrie Chan and produced by Katya Spiers. It's on display as part of the V&A x London Design Festival 2026 exhibition Awakenings, which asks how design, craft and technology can inspire new perspectives and bring to light invisible yet interconnected forces.

It's on view until Sunday 18 October, so you've only got the weekend to catch it. The V&A is open 10.00 to 17.30 on Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 October, and entry is free.