RCA2021 from 26 June to 4 July
The Royal College of Art’s global community present the 2021 graduate exhibition online as a digital discovery platform – RCA2021 – from 26 June to 4 July. Across our four schools, Architecture, Arts & Humanities, Communication and Design, the digital discovery platform will feature an international student cohort of emerging artists, designers, architects and creatives. Join the event on LinkedIn for updates.
4.2 million hours of creative practice has led to this spectacular exhibition of over 5,000 works from RCA’s student cohort; over 1,000 students from over 50 countries.
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RCA2021 engages, explores and interrogates vital topics and issues, providing solutions to real-world problems affecting society and the planet today. Students also envision products, services, spaces and architectures that look to what comes next, such as a future home design for an older LGBTQIA+ community by Caroline Bang (MA Interior Design), food-related space products (ZERO G Cutlery) proposed by Nikolas Grafakos (MA Global Innovation Design), and Wilza Mendes (MA Architecture) transports us to Kingston in 2093 in a project that envisions better Black futures. Elsewhere, projects by Guanpai Feng (MA Animation), Dameng He (MA Jewellery & Metal), Zongbo Jiang (MA Fashion) and Yiwen Tong (MA Visual Communication) create virtual worlds and characters through a variety of digital mediums including 3D animation and augmented reality. Other projects create imagined worlds via non-digital mediums too such as the figurative work of artist José Rafael Mendes (MA Painting).
Sustainability will be an important theme across RCA2021. Bea Brücker (MA Fashion) combines working with living organisms, computing and the development of compostable biomaterials, Kukbong Kim’s (MA Innovation Design Engineering) product Celour is a paint that captures and stores carbon dioxide, and Aethos is a system of receipts detailing sustainable (and ethical) information by Giulio Ferrato, Benedatta Locatelli and Conor Mc Donald Heffernan (MA Service Design). Works by Wai Yan Choi (MA Ceramics & Glass), Margo Trushina (MA Sculpture) and Natsuki Hanyu (MA Textiles) grapple with our complicated relationship with earth amidst the environmental crisis, and Claudia Robalino (MA Architecture) proposes an urban garden in the Andes that coexists with the cycles of the natural world.
As always, inclusive design is at the heart of a number of projects for 2021’s graduating cohort. Giovanni Dipilato presents RESET (Design Products), a project concerned with Tennis products for visually impaired athletes, and Jothi Kanayalal (MA Global Innovation Design) has developed Breana, a dynamic, inclusive humanoid breast form. Using soft robotics, Breana adapts its shape to customized measurements and helps with accurate bra design for women of all races, ages, and body-types.Â
Showcase
- Bahareh Saboktakin (MA Innovation Design Engineering) presents Spindle, a desktop rapid prototyping tool that enables textile innovators to create nonwoven fabric. Whereas existing 3D printers are not capable of creating super thin fibers, Spindle creates fibers that are nanometer to micrometer in thickness.
- Melanie Issaka (MA Photography) questions the representation of the black female figure within the photographic canon. The series Blueprint: Black skin, White mask draws upon notions of the blueprints - the schematics, models and structures that govern contemporary British society. Â
- Vivee Barengo (MA Information Experience Design) believes we could all learn something from fungi. With The Myco Bodhi, she looks to a sustainable future where mycelium and robotics could work together in a symbiotic relationship as part of our ecosystem.Â
- Inspired the pagan mysticism and coastal landscape of their hometown, digital artist and crafts-person Sam Chester (MA Fashion) manoeuvres between technological interfaces, video game experiences and AI systems, and myth, folklore, and ancient crafts, all the while weaving their own queer landscape.
- Nour Al Ahmad (MA Architecture) explores archiving and memory preservation in a project simultaneously situated in the cities of Damascus and London. Situated in a gaming environment, Memory Encoding follows the voices of individuals in these two cities and their lived experiences.
Online events
RCA2021 will also present an array of online events encompassing conversations, presentations, performances and unique experiences. From locations around the UK and the world, RCA students and teaching staff will come together to inspire and inform, alongside special guests including Glenn Adamson, Josef Byrne (Blinkink’s Head of Music Videos), Grant Gibson, Anna Ginsburg, Susan Howe, Maya Moumne and Hatem Imam (co-founders of Studio Safar, Beirut), Kirsten Norrie, Shannon Taggart and Koji Yamamura.
Online events are already available to browse on the RCA2021 digital discovery platform, and highlights include:
- Contemporary Art Practice students will give viewers a glimpse at 60 works in an hour through a cluster of performances, sonic explorations and choreographies at a special CAP TV event (27 June).Â
- Digital (Dis)comforts - The Future of Material Practices will see Deepika Srivastava (MA History of Design) join practitioners Kay Watson (Serpentine Galleries) and Suhair Khan (Google Art & Culture) to discuss connecting the digital and physical (28 June).
- Textiles Private View will offer an insight into the Textiles programme at the RCA and share students' work and thinking (28 June).Â
- At Animators in Conversation: Gender, Identity & Relationships (3 July), MA Animation graduates will discuss how they approach these themes with films ranging from portrayals of inter-generational dynamics to the relationship we have with ourselves.
Satellite events
Where possible, RCA2021 will be complemented by a festival of physical satellite events around London from the end of June through the summer and beyond.
Cromwell Place will play host to satellite events showcasing graduates from RCA’s MA Painting (23 June–27 June) and MA Sculpture (23 June–27 June) programmes in June, followed by the MA Photography and MA Print programmes (14–18 July) and MA Contemporary Art Practice (21–25 July).
Elsewhere, MA Information Experience Design present BEEP BEEP — The end of the end of the world: An IED Experience at Menier Gallery (23–25 July), the MA Animation Graduate Screening 2021 will take place at BFI Southbank (15–16 July) and MA Visual Communication 2021 graduates will introduce TERMINAL, a concept-led event at Ugly Duck from (27–30 June). The MA/MSc Innovation Design Engineering programme will also present the work of its 2021 cohort at RCA's Kensington Campus (16–18 July). Further satellite events will be announced.