The Royal College of Art Graduate Shows 2018

Throughout May and June, across the three RCA campuses and a mix of site specific locations in London, over 700 UK and international postgraduate students will exhibit future thinking from the realms of architecture, communication, design, art and humanities. Visitors can expect to find pioneering art work, advances in artificial intelligence, designs for space exploration and the latest in synthetic biotechnology. 

 Curating Contemporary Art Exhibitions – throughout May 2018

From a live internet troll cave installed in the Design Museum, to the first public art commission at the redeveloped Television Centre in White City, a series of radio broadcasts and a conspiracy generating website, Curating Contemporary Art students will present their final projects in collaboration with the Design Museum, Gasworks, LUX and property developers Stanhope. The four projects explore themes including the role of technology in shaping belief systems, public space making and emotional labour in public and private life.

RCA FASHION – A walk without a cat
180 The Strand, London WC2R 1EA
Thursday 14 June and Friday 15 June, by invitation only

In a characteristically brave presentation, MA Fashion students will show their graduate collections through performance, installation, music and choreography across two evenings.

SHOW COMMUNICATION
Saturday 23 June – Sunday 1 July (closed Friday 29 June) 
Press View: Tuesday 19 June, 4 – 6pm (Private View: Tuesday 19 June, 6 – 8pm)
The WestWorks and the MediaWorks, White City Place, 201 Wood Lane, London, W12 7TU 

From the culture of British hen parties to a totally immersive graphic novel about Cumbria, complete with Kendal Mint Cake sculptures, the smell of peppermint oil, damp bark and archival sounds – visitors are invited to explore the frontiers of virtual reality, sound, moving image, animation, graphic design, illustration, digital design, post-digital spaces and beyond. Look out for an accurate and positive animated portrayal of mental health that shows how smaller day-to-day stress can build up to a breakdown and a wearable device that amplifies electromagnetic fields allowing the wearer to feel and hear normally-undetectable electromagnetic fields.

SHOW ARCHITECTURE 
Press View: Wednesday 20 June, 4 – 6pm (Private View: Wednesday 20 June, 6 – 8pm)
The Workshop, 26 Lambeth High Street, London, SE1 7AG

In a radical exhibition the School of Architecture will tackle important issues such as ageing populations, social movements, ecology and climate change. Taking over a former fire engine garage in Lambeth, London this show will present potential solutions to problems based on real-life case studies including co-living spaces mixing older people and students, and transforming a former lido in Margate into a holistic hospice.

SHOW KENSINGTON – Design
Saturday 23 June – Sunday 1 July (closed Friday 29 June)
Press View: Thursday 21 June, 8am – 12pm (Private View: Thursday 21 June, 6 – 8pm)
RCA Kensington, Kensington Gore, London, SW7 2EU 

From game-changing smart fabrics to third-wave automotives, robotics, AI and design-led approaches to computing science and big data, this is a diverse exhibition from designers who are at the forefront of innovation. New inventions include a remouldable, biodegradable composite building material that is as strong as concrete and is primarily made from desert sand, a voice amplifier that will help people with Parkinsons disease to live social lives and new research that proves how knitting can be beneficial for health and wellbeing.

SHOW KENSINGTON – Sculpture and Arts & Humanities PhD
Saturday 23 June – Sunday 1 July (closed Friday 29 June) 
Press View: Thursday 21 June, 8am – 12pm (Private View: Thursday 21 June, 6 – 8pm)
RCA Kensington, Kensington Gore, London, SW7 2EU

This exhibition will bring together the full range and scale of sculpture today as well as projects from completing PhD students in Arts& Humanities. Highlights include an evocative, cinematic dreamscape made by re-editing a Hollywood classic, and augmented through over-painted film stills and a large-scale kinetic sculpture that visitors activate via a crank to move life-size human legs in a spiraling, mesmerising pattern.  

SHOW BATTERSEA
Saturday 23 June – Sunday 1 July (closed Friday 29 June)
Press View: Friday 22 June, 8am – 12pm (Private View: Friday 22 June, 6 – 8pm)
RCA Battersea, Howie Street, London, SW11 4AS

RCA Battersea will be filled with painting, writing, installation, history, performance, moving image, ceramics, glass, jewellery and metalwork. With a huge array of international talent on display, look out for an emotive video installation about the politics of the tourism industry that focuses on a 'packaged paradise' under the golden light of leisure, desire and luxury, and a thought-provoking installation that depicts a refugee who has reached the West after a long and difficult journey, and is now telling his story.

ENDS

For further information or images please contact Bethany Bull or Kim Pham, RCA Communications Office on t: +44 (0) 20 7590 4114, e: [email protected]

Notes to Editors

About the Royal College of Art

Engaging in teaching and research, the Royal College of Art offers the degrees of Graduate Diploma, MA, MRes, MPhil and PhD across the disciplines of art, architecture, design, communications and humanities.

It offers 28 highly specialised programmes in Art & Design to over 2,000 Master’s and doctoral students and more than 800 professionals interacting with them – including researchers, art and design practitioners, along with advisers and distinguished visitors.

http://www.rca.ac.uk