Cabbages. Courtesy Choi Jeong Hwa

Wolverhampton Art Gallery is showing the first public solo exhibition in the UK by a Korean contemporary artist.

Welcome, showcasing the work of internationally-known artist, architect and product designer Choi Jeong Hwa, is also one of the first displays held in the gallery’s brand new exhibition space.

Running until September 1 2007, the show features innovative constructions, diverse collections of objects and vivid colours. The building itself has become part of the exhibition, as the artist has wrapped the Victorian structure in fluorescent material spanning the full height of the gallery.

The gallery under wraps. Courtesy Choi Jeong Hwa

Choi Jeong Hwa is sometimes called the ‘pop artist’ of Korea, one of the country’s first avant-garde artists of the 1960s, and the exhibition is intended as a fitting counterpoint to the gallery’s important permanent Pop Art collection.

He has drawn inspiration from influences as wide ranging as Black Country industrial heritage, Asian weddings, Caribbean carnivals and charity shops. An imposing ‘chimney’ made of plastic buckets dominates the atrium.

Cabinets display a ‘People’s Silverware Collection’ – a mixture of objects from the gallery’s Elkington plate collection and silverware borrowed from local people’s homes plus plastic items wrapped in silver foil.

Policeman / Georgian. Courtesy Choi Jeong Hwa

The artist has also assembled a unique mixture of objects and artworks, including pieces from 24 other contemporary Korean artists along with work by Andy Warhol, Gavin Turk and Vladimir Trechikoff.

These are juxtaposed with work from emerging art students, Egyptian sculpture, Victorian genre painting, African hair combs and contemporary furniture.

Choi Jeong Hwa is concerned with the fundamental functions and roles of art and uses these unusual combinations of old and new, unknown and established, manufactured and bespoke to create an alternative context to view the objects.

Clear lotus. Courtesy Choi Jeong Hwa

Joining these installations and commissions, Welcome displays some of Choi Jeong Hwa’s better-known pieces like Lotus (2005), which was shown at the Korean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and his giant pile of plastic magnets which members of the public are invited to create their own art with.

Visitors should also be on the look out for Choi Jeong Hwa’s gallery ‘interventions’, with the artist himself making humorous appearances within the venue’s permanent collections.