RCA2022 Battersea
Studio Building
Howie Street
London SW11 4NL
Fri 23 Sept (12-6pm) | Exhibition open to the public
Sat 24 & Sun 25 Sept (12-6pm) | Exhibition open to the public
Mon 26 Sept (12-6pm) | Exhibition open to the public
Tues 27 Sept (12-9pm) | Exhibition open to the public with late opening
Wed 28 Sept (12-6pm) | Exhibition open to the public
Wed 28 Sept (6-9pm) | Private View Event
The Royal College of Art’s (RCA) global community presents its 2022 autumn graduate exhibition held within the newly opened Studio Building in Battersea designed by Herzog & de Meuron, and online as a digital discovery platform – RCA2022 – from 23 to 28 September.
The RCA2022 Autumn Show, which overlaps with London Design Festival, features the final 2022 cohort of graduates from the world’s leading university of art and design, highlighting work from Ceramics & Glass, Painting, Textiles, Information Experience Design, Fashion, Photography, Print, Arts & Design research and Visual Communication.
RCA2022 engages, explores and interrogates vital topics and issues, providing solutions and artistic responses to problems affecting society and the planet today, with four themes emerging that tie work together: Bodies, Deep Connections, Environments and the Big Beyond. Project highlights include:
-Charly Blackburn (MA Ceramics & Glass) uses raw materials originally found within the Earth’s surface to explore themes of ecology, overconsumption and the pressures of our technological demands on the earth and its inhabitants. Her current body of work investigates the significance of faience, a sintered-quartz ceramic material, in ancient Egyptian pottery and its relation to copper and glass industries.
-Rebecca Armstrong (MA Fashion) looks to cultivate a sense of intimacy between wearer and garment through her designs, exploring our relationship to material and form. Building on practices traditionally used in millinery, elements of each piece are specifically moulded to the body, resulting in uniquely bespoke works.
-Alicja Biala (MA Visual Communication) unveils a new series of sculptural works created using highly acidic waste sites of mid century mining and industrial production to corrode and etch large metallic pieces. The result sits between land art, painting, etching and sculpture, and draws attention to the enduring impact of extractive methods.
-Jiajing Zhao (MA Information Experience Design) presents Time-flux, a real-time generative installation of projection and sound which respond to the common struggle between standard clock time and experiential time. Constantly drifting generative shapes pulse through transparent panels, creating an experience of flowing continuum in the space.
-Gayle Chong Kwan (PhD) showcases The Circulating Department (2021), sculptural and photographic wearable work that was developed during a residency at the V&A. As part of her PhD on ‘Imaginal Travel’, Gayle explores a now defunct department at the museum through an expanded and embodied notion of photography.
-Rose Chiarello (MA Textiles) presents ‘Scintillation’, a textile project about light and movement and how the eye is engaged when looking at an object of material beauty. Rose has developed a technique to replicate glass-like surfaces in textiles to produce a new type of woven material.
-Fan Ji (MA Ceramics & Glass) incorporates metal materials from the built environment with clay to create surprising material symbiosis and to reflect on the apocalyptic turn in human-nature relationships during the Anthropocene. Fan’s ceramic forms are sentimental representations of natural phenomena rejecting the privileging of human existence over the existence of nonhuman objects.
-Lea Lerma (MA Photography) showcases The Superstars project, an ongoing series of 150 pictures (to date) documenting the daily life of a group of women who decided to live together. Lea is drawn to moments of daily life that have a cinematic potential, following natural light to record fragments of scenes.
-Ameera Kawash (PhD) explores tobacco as material, ritual, adornment, and value in the recorded performance ‘Black Body Radiation: Rescripting Data Bodies’, a collaboration with performance artist Ama BE. Deploying body sensor networks and blockchain architectures, the artwork generates performance-driven NFTs and rescripts data bodies as agential forces extending from the performer’s
movements.
-Matrika Bhandari (MA Textiles) presents ‘‘नील वर्ण (Neel Varna): The Blue Letter’, a design research project which questions “What is the Indian way of sustainable thinking?”. A documentary alongside 8 textile pieces are displayed to express a body of research which resulted in a framework for collaboration between designers and traditional artisans rooted in equity and inclusivity.
-Sarah Cunningham (MA Painting and recipient of the Ali. H Alkazzi Scholarship Award) presents paintings and poetry with a sensitivity towards landscape structures and botanical life. Her new oil painting ‘Starshine and Clay’ represents the divide between opportunity and reality inspired by Lucille Clifton’s poem ‘Come Celebrate with me’.
The full exhibition dates
Fri 23 Sept (12-6pm) | Exhibition open to the public
Sat 24 & Sun 25 Sept (12-6pm) | Exhibition open to the public
Mon 26 Sept (12-6pm) | Exhibition open to the public
Tues 27 Sept (12-9pm) | Exhibition open to the public with late opening
Wed 28 Sept (12-6pm) | Exhibition open to the public
Wed 28 Sept (6-9pm) | Private View Event
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