Alchemy and Form: SASA Works’ Debut Exhibition at Blue Mountain School

London’s Blue Mountain School has built its reputation as one of the city’s most interesting creative spaces — part gallery, part design incubator, part Michelin-starred restaurant. For Frieze Week 2025, it plays host to Alchemy and Form, the debut solo exhibition by SASA Works, the London-based studio founded by artist-designer Craig Bamford.

The show, running from 10th October and through to December, is a study in transformation — of materials, of form, and of the handmade object’s place in the modern world. Bamford’s practice exists somewhere between design and sculpture, with pieces that are at once functional and ritualistic. Each work in Alchemy and Form explores how raw, natural elements can be refined into something timeless without losing their essential spirit.

SASA Works’ approach is grounded in traditional craftsmanship — wood, metal, beeswax, and fabric are shaped using ancient techniques such as hand-carving and cuttlebone casting. These methods lend the work a tactile honesty, connecting contemporary design with processes that predate industrial production. But this isn’t nostalgia. Instead, Bamford’s pieces feel relevant to now — a response to our current appetite for objects with soul, made slowly and intentionally.

Among the standout works is Hearth, a table carved from 500-year-old Scottish oak, its surface integrated with a ceremonial bowl. It’s a design that quietly nods to ideas of gathering and community, presenting furniture not just as an object, but as a focal point for human connection. Nearby, Atai, a kinetic light sculpture made from hand-beaten brass, copper, and silver, captures another side of the studio’s philosophy — one that values balance, rhythm, and the interplay between chaos and control.

That duality — rawness and refinement, imperfection and precision — runs through the exhibition. Every curve, grain, and joint feels purposeful yet organic, as though the materials themselves are guiding the process. It’s this tension that makes SASA Works’ output particularly compelling within the context of modern menswear and design culture: functional minimalism reimagined through emotion and tactility rather than slickness or speed.

For Blue Mountain School, this collaboration fits naturally. The institution has long blurred boundaries between art, food, and design — its RIBA-award-winning building by 6a Architects houses not only exhibition spaces but also Cycene, its Michelin-starred restaurant, and a rooftop listening room for intimate performances and events.

In that environment, Alchemy and Form feels right at home: a meditation on the act of making, displayed in a space where creation itself is the common language. SASA Works may be new to the solo exhibition circuit, but Bamford’s work suggests a creative maturity that’s already fully formed — grounded in craft, elevated by concept, and deeply attuned to the quiet power of the handmade.

Alchemy and Form runs from 10th October through December 2025 at Blue Mountain School, 9 Chance Street, London.