12 discoveries to make at RCA2023: Graduate Show at Truman Brewery this weekend

Across the Schools of Architecture, Arts & Humanities, Communication and Design, students at the RCA create solutions and artistic responses to some of the most pressing problems affecting society and the planet today.

From novel uses of materials to experimentations with new technologies, through engagement with our environment and the narratives that shape our societies, discover the work of an international cohort of emerging artists, designers, architects and creatives.

Here are just a few of the inspiring works you will encounter at RCA2023: Graduate Show at Truman Brewery this weekend.

MA Visual Communication student Ollie Cameron’s short film documents his journey along Britain’s oldest road, The Ridgeway, with a scroll box containing 87 metres of paper that he used to take rubbings of the imprints left behind along the trail. The film is part of his work exploring the layered and diverse relationship we have with the landscape.

Chime, is a socially-engaged music therapy intervention, by MA/MSc Innovation Design Engineering student Henry Parkin. It explores the therapeutic benefits of group music-making and how they apply to training the working memory of people with macular degeneration, which is the leading cause of irreversible blindness.

MA Fashion student Yuhan Bai has created Hushellaste, a project exploring the development of biodegradable womenswear made from plant-based materials and agricultural waste. She questions how to integrate the laws of nature into the textile and fashion industries for a more sustainable fashion future.

Mural-sized paintings, material evolutionary sculptures, sci-fi writing and large-scale installations by Historical Futurist and MA Contemporary Art Practice student Alyse Stone merge to build worlds that foreground the Black imagination into an entirely new terrain. Encounter them at the Truman Brewery and through a performance reading from her Black Alchemisphere work at the Shoreditch Arts Club at 7pm on Saturday 15 July 2023.

MA/MSc Global Innovation Design student Mariam Ibrahim has has produced the Morning Meta-Muffin: a non-invasive metabolic screening kit designed for individuals at risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes. The kit creates a unique nutritional fingerprint to better understand the needs of the user’s body so that they can effectively manage their diet.

Mortality Matters by MA Interior Design student Subin Seol combines a pottery studio with an end-of-life planning centre. Here people can plan their funerals, reflect on their lives, and create urns that truly represent who they are.

THE TREE by MA Design Products student Zhengxiong Rong is a furniture series which rebuilds the intimacy between living space and local environment. Each piece is made from a single coppiced tree trunk, sourced locally and split by coppice workers.

Folgelandschaft, or After-Landscape by MA Architecture studentZibo Zhang proposes a way to reclaim and repurpose the open-pit coal mine in Hambach, Germany, Europe's largest open-pit coal mine. Zhang proposes retaining the existing infrastructure and machines of extraction, but transforming them into tools of reconstruction to delicately tend the landscape.

Il Cherubino Crudo, or The Raw Cherub, by MA Animation student Francesco Coppola deconstructs images of childhood through 3D animation and experimentations with algae gelatine, which degrade each frame of the film and enhance its nostalgic qualities.

Subject < — > Matter, by MA Jewellery & Metal student Yeshé Magar is a sculpture that explores and reveals the interconnectedness of man and the material world by taking live bio signals from the body to move the ferrofluid matter inside.

Working with clay and plastic, MA Sculpture student Annette Warner’s work looks at how we are taught to see. TBC (Touch, Breathe, Capture), considers how our digitally captured memories redefine us and explores how we categorise ourselves in a digital age.

Borderlands: Augmented Nature is a performance integrating the human body, physical materials, and digital media to create real-time interactions. MA Textiles students Miki Lin and Siyuan Shen have created an intelligent wearable device, the Interactive Glove, which can be connected to a VR headset, synchronised in Unreal Engine (UE), and trigger audio-visual interactions in the virtual space. Watch the glove in action and take part in this immersive interactive experience on Saturday 15 July at 1pm at Truman Brewery.