Double Vision; Print MA RCA at Cromwell Place .

Double Vision, Print MA Graduates Show, Cromwell Place 14-18 July 2021

Double Vision, Print MA Graduates Show, Cromwell Place 14-18 July 2021

Double Vision.

In her moving book, ‘In Other Words’, the American writer Jhumpa Lahiri explores her decision, based on passionate curiosity, to write in Italian. Fluent in Bengali which she speaks at home with her parents and English which she learns at school, she chooses as an adult to learn and write in a third language, finding freedom in the directness it forces upon her.

More than two thirds of this year’s graduates have more than one language. This past 18 months has made us all acutely aware that language is embodied and that bodies are differently vulnerable. The strange intimacy and estrangement of speaking only through a screen has become our Esperanto.

Print itself is a language that often requires translation from the haptic and spatial to the screen or plate and back again. To make traditional prints you need to think in reverse, and the complexity and error prone nature of many processes means that maker must be alive to chance and able to improvise. Slow making allows for reflection. To translate such thinking to the screen requires persistence, since most computer program aims standardize things, to reduce error and value speed.

The achievements of this year’s 35 graduates are profound. A collective rebellion against confinements of all kinds has resulted in an eruption of matter. Rocks, pillows, plants, steel, rabbits’ ears, liquid light, the play between image and reality is ever- present. A person becomes a noticeboard, a billboard becomes a painting, flowers become prints, a face emerges from the inky matrix of a lithographic stone and railings become musical instruments. There is a dreamlike aspect to some work, reflecting the interiority forced on us all by Covid and the value of stories to connect people across time and space.

This exhibition marks a return to materially shared experiences. It contains a certain reckoning with what is really important: care, improvisation, collaboration. An ability to convey emotion and difficulty is ever-present.

I trust in the ability of these graduates to continue creatively transforming limitations. Please enjoy their provocations and support their future work.

The show is accompanied by a text written for the occasion by Helen Cammock and a series of images by Mark Titchner. We thank them for these contributions which will be on issuu and in hard copy at some future point in the year.

Professor Jo Stockham, Head of Print The exhibition includes work by;

Anders Aarvik, Emma Bates, Lauren Bevan, Judith Burrows, Rin Coppola, Abbeygale Corrigan, Julie Kern Donck, Amalia Flarakou-Flari, Tara Garden, Nuno Gil, (Xander) Zixuan Gu, Xiaohan Guo, Yiran Guo, Thomas Hjelm, Chuling Jin, Frances Knee, Skyler Yixian Liu, Yan Luo, Xiaoshuang Niu, Noah Petri, Liang Qiao, Letian Qu, Abhaya Rajani, Ania Rekas, Anna Sheriakova, Art Sokoloff, Savvas Theofanous, Yanbing Tian, Wei Wang, Jeannie Wong, Siyu Xia, Diyou Yu, Xutong Yuan, Xintong Zhang, Qiaodan Zheng.

Please note you will need to book to visit this exhibition; https://cromwellplace.com/whats-on/rca-2021-photography-print-contemporary-art-practi