The Birthday Party
RA Student Night
Scott Castner is a second year Performance Design and Practice student at Central Saint Martins, and a multidisciplinary performance artist. His work attempts to challenge narrative structure and focus on the human form as both a tool for creation and a source of inspiration. By inviting the audience into his discomfort, Scott asks them to investigate their own discomforts and challenge their notions of identity. He often works with dance, digital projections, sound art, text, makeup and costume to build performances, but is always l pushing the boundaries of performance.
Calvin Cho will be graduating from the Creative Direction course at London College of Fashion in 2019. As a content creator, his work mainly focuses on how fashion can be conveyed and promoted across various media such as film, digital and print as well as physical spaces. Having worked at Dazed Media and Nowness, Calvin uses his experience to inform his creative thought process, which allows him to be actively involved in the industry.
Tobi Alexandra Falade is a third year Fine Art Painting student at Wimbledon College of Arts. Her work is influenced by her native Nigeria, from where she moved to London at age seven, and the duality of this narrative. Based on family photographs and her own personal photography, she produces oil-rich, flattened paintings, in which the figures are exaggerated. Tobi also investigates and explores collage. Manipulating these practices allows her to create an experience of diaspora, where her two worlds constantly merge and separate.
Jennie Foot is a third year Fine Art student at Chelsea College of Arts. As part of her practice, she uses sound and moving image to construct installations that imply a narrative. Most of the themes in her work are derived from external narratives or archival material that is re-contextualised in a gallery environment. More recently, she has been exploring public environments and liminal spaces to create unsettling, evocative atmospheres.
Elvira García studies Culture, Criticism and Curation at Central Saint Martins, where she has collaborated in several pop-up shows. She endeavours to build bridges towards new narratives that enrich both the audience and the artworks. Elvira is the curator of MAP Studio Café in Kentish Town, hosting bi-monthly exhibitions. Here she has gained insight into displaying art in a non-gallery context, and bringing together artworks and audiences by chance. Her exhibitions and gatherings aim to arouse empathy and reflection.
Gilly Hernandez is a second year Fashion PR and Communication student at London College of Fashion. Born in Trinidad, surrounded by a vibrant and colourful culture, her inspiration comes from her heritage. Passionate about fashion and entrepreneurship, Gilly works as a Fashion PR representative for clients who depend on a PR team to present their brand to the world. In her spare time, she enjoys being creative and writes about events in and around London for her blog The London Hummingbird.
Design Oswin Tickler / smallfury.com Tobi connects deeply with Sunhead by Gabriella Boyd. As a Fine Art student whose oil paintings explore humanity, Tobi was drawn to Boyd’s work, as the artist is also fascinated by the complexities of the human state. “Sunhead has an exothermic energy, it glows,” says Tobi, “a kind of glow that warms and disrupts the reader.” Tobi admires Boyd’s use of colour and its role in evoking a juxtaposition of emotions in the viewer. “Sunhead brings forward tones of desire and comfort, through the warm pink, orange and yellow hues,” she explains, “but also a sense of fear in the lone pink figure looking out away from us.” Tobi’s favourite aspect of Sunhead is “the squiggly lines that start in the sky but remain unfinished, allowing the viewer to decide an ending.”
Se repulen.’ Francisco Goya (1746—1828), 1799. Photo credit © Royal Academy of Arts, London
Elvira is fascinated by Francisco Goya’s etching Se Repulen (They tidy themsleves up) and its ability to “capture the fragile line between the known and the otherness, between what is acceptable and not, and how the limit between both can be as superficial as a pedicure.” It is the way Goya portrays his concerns about humanity that stirs Elvira. Living in London, far from 18th– century Madrid where the painter published these works, Elvira sees in Goya “a place where current concerns of ignorance and greed could be associated and explored.” It is Goya’s capacity to speak to a huge variety of people that Elvira aims to achieve through her curatorial practice.
Gilly picked Arnold Mason’s Brown Study, a portrait of a young woman that Mason painted shortly after the arrival of the Windrush. The woman, Gilly says, relates to her Caribbean self. “Her journey looks familiar and we possibly share the hopes of a young woman leaving behind a small island in exchange for the unfamiliar.” Gilly admires how the artist has captured something very natural yet striking, from the “classic yet messy bun, to the gentle pink colour of her dress.” It leaves her wanting to know more. “I want to know her story and who, if anyone, she came over with from Jamaica with on the Windrush.” Although the title could be described as objectionable, Gilly disagrees. “As a black person, I’m not offended by it. On the contrary, I find it proud and reserved.”
Cameron Lee
Beatrice Morris
Marco Pini
Jessica Timbs
Helena Vannerley
Freddie Wise
Cameron Lee is a third year Film Practice student at London College of Communication, and a film director. He recently completed a feature film set between his hometown of Chorley and the remote Scottish island of Jura, starring Krautrock legend Damo Suzuki. Understanding the process of filmmaking has helped him to appreciate both viewing and making films more. Now Cameron is inspired to turn the camera on himself a little more, in an attempt to work out how various experiences in his life have shaped his feelings and opinions.
Beatrice Morris is in her second year of the Production Arts for Screen course at Wimbledon College of Arts. She creates sets for screen and interactive installation pieces, always exploring themes of identity and the tension between past and future. For Beatrice, designing sets means creating entire worlds: a believable environment is the difference between a film being a form of escapism, and mere moving images. She sees the set as an extension of the characters; her task is to try and understand them, unpick them, and to eventually translate all that into a physical space.
Marco Pini is a second year Graphic and Media Design student at London College of Communication, and a graphic and sound artist. His work focuses primarily on manipulating digital recordings and printing processes. Under the moniker gg skips, he invents new visual languages and scores to create designed soundscapes. Marco also runs the label and events collective Slow Dance and releases music as Glows.
Jessica Timbs is a third year Fine Art student at Chelsea College of Arts. She tends to work in film, sculpture and performance, led by an awareness of herself as a material, physical being. Her recent work considers ideas surrounding eating and digestion; the porousness of the boundaries of the body; fluidity, and the global reach of her day-to-day activities. An avid collector and crafter of objects, her interest in these themes usually stems from an object she made or found. Jessica often works with viscous or unstable materials, such as foam or salt dough, attempting to convey the things around her as active, in flux.
Helena Vannerley is a third year Graphic Design student at Camberwell College of Arts. Her practice focuses on her fascination with the world and a deep-seated desire to acquire, share and highlight knowledge. This has led her to explore educational karaoke, red bricks, niche museums and the forgery of official documents, among other things. An ‘accidental’ art student, she finds her greatest inspiration in capturing a significant moment through sketches. “This is why I love exploring the massive RA archive,” she says.
Freddie Wise is a second year Fine Art Painting student at Camberwell College of Arts. Over the last year and a half, he has developed his interest in using material qualities, exposing the abstraction of everyday objects, working in paint and other mediums.
Design, Angelica Kauffman RA (1741–1807), 1778–80. Photo credit © Royal Academy of Arts, London; Photographer: John Hammond
Station Approach, L.S. Lowry RA (1887—1976), 1962 Photo credit © Royal Academy of Arts, London; Photographer: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd
“I think it’s mostly a northern call-back,” Cameron says of his chosen work, Station Approach by L.S. Lowry. Born and bred just north of Manchester, Cameron feels a connection with Lowry’s depiction of the city’s Exchange station. As a schoolboy, Cameron drew Lowry-like little stick men. “At the time I didn’t really get it, but as I’ve got older and gone to new places, he has always been an artist that has come back to me, and this piece is like a reminder of home.” Cameron feels this resonance extends beyond the familiar: as a film practice student, he appreciates how Lowry captures the everyday, bringing movement to a static medium. “In my own work I like to keep the camera static, like a painting, and allow the people and life to come to the lens.”
Head of a Ghostly Figure, George Dance RA (1741—1825), c. 1780. Photo credit © Royal Academy of Arts, London Prismatic Colour Wheel, Moses Harris (1730–ca.1788). Photo credit Royal Academy of Arts, London; Photographer: John Hammond
Colour is intrinsic to the production of art, and Beatrice’s studies have led to an interest in its visual power. “The colour wheel is a first stepping stone into art,” she says of Moses Harris’s 18th century etching, Prismatic Colour Wheel. “It’s the perfect mix of practicality and aesthetics.” Harris’s work highlights the often forgotten scientific aspects of art, through concentrating on the primary colours and their ability to concoct any given hue. “It’s a simple yet effective way of showing the relationship between colours,” Beatrice explains, “so effective that we haven’t had to reinvent it.” Prismatic Colour Wheel has challenged her to consider colour in many ways: “the colour wheel signifies people really trying to understand not only the fundamentals of art through colour, but of life itself.”
It is the harrowing yet comic nature of George Dance’s Head of A Ghostly Figure that attracts Marco, as he loves “anything to do with exaggerated ghouls and ghosts, the line between fear and joviality.” In his own work he explores “themes of comedy, the extraterrestrial, myth and legend and social satire, by analysis of pop culture.” While most of Marco’s current work is sound art, he shares the themes Dance explores in his art. “I recently did a sound piece with the idea of writing an album from a ghost’s perspective, just after he died.” There is a striking similarity between Marco’s tongue-incheek approach to darker subjects and Dance’s ghoulish depiction. When dealing with sombre subjects, particularly in art, Marco believes it’s important to “extract comedy from it.”
Head of a River God —The Tyne, After Sir William Chambers RA (1723–1796), 1780. Photo credit © Royal Academy of Arts, London
What made Jessica select Head of a River God —The Tyne, after Sir William Chambers? “It reminded me of a shot in a film by Rebecca Lennon I saw recently. It features some similar looking gargoyle-like heads carved into a fountain, with water streaming out of their mouths.” Lennon also has been posting lots of images of busts, statues and fountains around Italy on Instagram lately. “I guess I was struck by the print because of that,” she adds. Another reason for Jessica’s choice is her relationship with water: “It makes up so much of us, and yet its characteristics go against how I see myself. I’ve been trying to think of myself more fluidly, as changeable, less distinct.” For Jessica, a river god embodies that state.
Sketches of Queen Victoria, Sir John Gilbert RA (1817–1897), 1887. Photo credit © Royal Academy of Arts, London
Helena has chosen Sketches of Queen Victoria by Sir John Gilbert, a former member of the Royal Academy, because it attempts to preserve a moment in history. The artist has grabbed a pen and is “recording something that is important to them,” using it for reference later. Helena sees this as the driving force behind her own artistic techniques, believing that a moment that has once inspired or interested one person can inspire and become significant to another.
Design, one of four paintings by Angelica Kauffman on the ceiling of the Royal Academy entrance hall, is central both to its collection and the female art movement - Kauffman was one of only two founding RA female members. Freddie has chosen this work because “it is one of four paintings which collectively represent the ‘elements of art’ – invention, composition, design, and colour – set out by Joshua Reynolds in his RA lectures. Freddie connects the act of drawing depicted in the painting with his own creative practice. “I use a lot of drawing in my work as a way to think through images. Also, the artist is drawing the Belvedere Torso, a famous classical sculpture, which relates to the way I like to describe objects in my work, even though they tend to be more contemporary.”
Contributors
Simple yet challenging – these are the qualities of Kira Freije’s statue Standing Woman Arms Folded that fascinate Scott. “It takes very little, the form, the metal, and the text, but the sum of its parts conjures a much richer and more complex idea,” – the vast history of objectification of women in art. Although there is not much technical overlap with Scott’s own practice of performance, a very different discipline, he uses a lot of the same tools as Freije to create complex ideas. “Text is central to my work … I think that language is a deeply useful tool, especially when used in conjunction with other practices.”
Since joining the Royal Academy of Arts as a curator for this event, Calvin has been able to look through art archives he has never seen before. One thing that struck him was the work by the book illustrator Charles W. Stewart, particularly his piece, The Apparition. “The hues of the illustration, the girls’ expression — it’s all very quirky,” Calvin notes. “There was a peculiar mood that he brought into his art.” While this doesn’t relate to his current study of creative cirection, Calvin enjoys art that has an eccentric touch, along with medieval vibes and timeless architecture. “It’s different from the classic gothic art from way back. It has a modern twist to it.” Something that he could possibly take inspiration from in the freelance styling work he does outside of university.
“I have known this work for a long time,” Jennie says when asked why she chose one of George Stubbs’ anatomical horse drawings. She remembers being amazed by them as a young girl. “I love the detail of the drawings, and that they were used not only to help artists improve their accuracy when drawing horses, but scientifically as well.” Jennie believes it is important to see how artists sometimes develop their practice through drawing, then progress to different media. She has always been really interested in archiving, and seeing the orignal drawings in the RA library of images that she had first set eyes on years ago was thrilling.
This publication was produced by students on MA Publishing and BA Magazine Journalism and Publishing at London College of Communication.
Standing Woman Arms Folded, Kira Freije, 2015 © Kira Freije. Photo credit Royal Academy of Arts, London
Sunhead, Gabriella Boyd, 2017 © The Artist. Photo credit Royal Academy of Arts, London; Photographer: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd
Project Manager Benjamin Mayr
The Apparition, Charles W. Stewart (1915—2001), 1973. Photo credit © Royal Academy of Arts, London
Brown Study, Arnold Mason RA (1885 - 1963), 1949. © The Artist’s Estate. Photo credit © Royal Academy of Arts, London; Photographer: John Hammond
Writers Amy Clarke Isabella Colloff Watson Blake Creighton Rhea Denenga Edena Klimenti Benjamin Mayr Eleanor Merry
Outline drawing possibly for The First Anatomical Table of the Skeleton of the Horse, George Stubbs ARA (1724–1806), 1756–1758. Photo credit © Royal Academy of Arts, London
RA Student Night: The Birthday Party Collections guide by BA and MA students at London College of Communication
RA Student Night: The Birthday Party 8 December 2018
Gilly Hernandez
UAL Student Curators highlight their favourite works from the RA Collection
Elvira García
Since its founding in 1768, The Royal Academy of Arts and its Collection has acted as a source of inspiration for young creatives and remain so to this day.
Jenny Foot
In celebration of the RA’s 250th anniversary, 12 UAL students have come together to curate a one-night festival for their peers.
Tobi Alexandra Falade
To inform the programming for tonight’s birthday bash, the student curators spent time exploring the RA Collection with each student being asked to identify the work that most appealed to them.
Calvin Cho
By sharing their favourite work, the students reveal aspects of the inspirations and motivations that drive their own individual creative practices.
Scott Castner