Visual Communication Students Exhibit Experimental Image-making at London Gallery

Second-year Visual Communication students Jingjing Shen, Shadow (Xiaoxue) Tian, Youngju Oh and Yinan Zhang showed 24 pieces at the Hanmi Gallery in Fitzrovia, London last month (9–19 January) in the week before their work-in-progress show. Their work embodies a range of approaches to experimental image-making from using multiple screens to deploying mirrored objects and even natural forces – crashing waves, melting ice or fire – as creative interventions in the production process. When Nothing is Sure, Everything is Possible showcased these efforts in exploring a new visual language and meaning.

The four came together during the Dean of the School of Communication Neville Brody’s ‘Design Without’ module – a part of the Visual Communication programme, which invites students to design, but without rules and guidelines. They proposed the resulting pieces, curated from a series of weekly projects from the module, as an exhibition to the Hanmi Gallery.

Although three of the students –  Jingjing Shen, Shadow (Xiaoxue) Tian and Yinan Zhang – are Chinese, and Youngju Oh is South Korean, posing as an all-Asian collective was not intentional. According to Oh, their shared commitment to the experimental image-making process has been far greater impetus for collaboration. They have relished the creativity and freedom of the Royal College of Art, and London, that has allowed them to be so expressive and experimental, she said.

Youngju added, ‘As Visual Communication students, we are at a boundary between art and design. It's the communication that is important. We don’t care so much about media – we deal with it all. It’s the topic that’s important.’

You can find press reviews of When Nothing is Sure, Everything is Possible at Eastern Art and Euchinese.co.uk.