Royal College of Art

So finally I organise myself to post the art work I saw last Thursday. The RCA has traditionally been cramped into a very small space the shows were often a hotch potch with different departments scoring the best spaces.

The very worst year was when they shoved the design faculty into a wooden shack across the road in Hyde Park. Now the entire fine art department has decamped to Battersea, it was a mission to get to but what an awesome space they have, it is right up there with the kind of gallery spaces you see including Victoria Miro and the White Cube. The photograph below should give you an idea of the scale of the sculpture department, the painting is across the road and has a lovely mezzanine allowing for more intimate spaces too. Yelena Popova

here

I loved her application of paint and use of colour, but especially effective was how the paintings were displayed, I wish I could get my students to think about this more.

Shi Kai Tseng

here

The above ceramics were not in fact in the ceramics department, but in product design, I really like the blurring of boundaries as far as materials are concerned and these vessels are doubly beautiful for combing two mediums as they also use photography to create the images via a pinhole camera. I can tell you having done both photo emulsion and pin hole that neither process is easy so to combine the two equates to an act of patience combined with dogged determination. The vessels were very ethereal but sadly not for sale.

Lauren Barfoot
Here

Lauren Barfoot's work which you can see in the background was brilliant too, I am really loving how computers and digital printing are blowing wide open the way textiles are printed, I have some images I would love to see on silk, but the best printing factories are in Milan!

Marina Dragomirova

Here

I love the fifties feel to her furniture and would love to weave one of these chairs, great fun.

Laura Amstein

Here

I failed to get any photographs of her work, she seemed stuck in a corridor but she had already won an award and I think she will be very successful, her bags are beautifully crafted and the colours are divine.

Jonna Saarinen

Here

Not everything here is original, but I like the shapes and colours of these fabrics anyway.

Catherine Aitken
Here

I thought this display was very original and something I would love to own

Back to the fine art studios

Ashley Rich

Here

and my favourite artist

Helen Pritchard

I would have bought each and every piece