RCA Fine Arts graduate show

Somehow or other graduates from the Royal College of Art always seem to produce some of the most exciting work.

Surprisingly for such a forward-looking establishment the past is frequently a source of inspiration.

Hitomi Hisono harks back to the 18th-century in fabulously ornate boxes in porcelain covered with 3D foliage. She also uses imagery drawn from antique clothes to decorate tea services.

Frances Federer uses 18th-century gilding techniques but with contemporary imagery and Pumina Patel draws inspiration from mogul palaces to create wonderful glass containers.

Intriguingly, glass can have a sense of movement. Charlotte Sale’s platters look like the splashes of raindrops hitting the ground, while Shan Valla’s balloon-shaped bud vases look poised to roll away and her thin rose twig glass stem vases seem to run across the table. Even Penny Batley’s huge glass bead lights could snake off across the floor.

Even the most mundane object can represent higher concerns. Aliki-Margarita Stroumpoli’s ceramic toilet bowls decorated with huge unblinking eyes complete with matching toilet paper highlight 21st-century intrusion into personal space.

Surprisingly she is from the metalwork department where Max Warren breathes new life into old silver by using new technology to engrave contemporary images onto old salvers. Many of the objects are for sale and graduates are happy to work to commission.

Show RCA One

Features work by students from the Fine Art courses of Painting, Photography and Printmaking and Applied Art - Ceramics and Glass, Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork and Jewellery.

This is a great opportunity for the public to buy work from emerging contemporary artists and makers before they are snapped up by galleries and collectors.

Open 29 May–7 June 2009, 11am–8pm*. Visit www.rca.ac.uk.
(* The exhibition will close early, at 6pm, on the final day of the exhibition, 7 June 2009)