Premiums: Interim projects

Interesting exhibition at the Royal Academy of work by the RA Schools postgraduate fine art students half way through their studies.

It was a bit of a mixed bag of work and I suspect as I go to see so much, that a lot of it looked derivative of other things, although often those things were works I’d seen very recently so maybe it’s more about the current zeitgeist!

I won’t go on about bad contemporary painting but there were some examples! However I did like Sean Steadman’s big surrealist work as it was well done particularly the giant damaged finger nail. In the same room I liked Sophie Alsbo’s work “Comeback”, four screens showing film of a waterfall, with real sections, pixilated and out of focus ones., which was rather relaxing.

My favourite pieces were Laurence Owen’s ceramics with interesting titles such as “Daddy’s Girl” and “Limp Bisque”! I was also fascinated by Max Prus’s flat free standing figures which were eerily 3D and really seemed to inhabit the space, an interesting optical illusion.

I would have liked a bit more commentary on the work by the students to have an idea of what they were aiming for and if these were interim projects where that thought they were going.

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