This year, the Royal College of Art's annual summer show will include work by the greatest number of graduating students in the College's 175 year history.
Show RCA 2012 is to take place simultaneously in six buildings across the College's two campuses in Battersea and Kensington from June 20 to July 1, 2012.
Show RCA Kensington will include students from the programmes of Architecture; Ceramics & Glass; Fashion Footwear & Accessories; Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork & Jewellery; Innovation Design Engineering; Textiles; Vehicle Design and the School of Humanities (including the first graduating students from the Critical Writing in Art & Design programme) exhibiting in the Darwin Building. Students from Animation and Visual Communication will be taking over the Stevens building, utilising studios, staircases and corridors to display their work.
Show RCA Battersea will feature work from the Fine Art programmes of Painting, Photography, Printmaking and Sculpture. Both the Sculpture and Painting buildings will be used as gallery spaces, with students also using parts of the College's brand new Dyson building. The College will be making use of the adjacent Testbed 1 space again this year to exhibit work by students from the Design Products and Design Interactions programmes, ensuring a cross-disciplinary approach over both sites.
Show RCA offers visitors - some 40,000 last year - a unique opportunity to experience the very best of emerging contemporary art and design practice. Over 500 art and design postgraduate students from more than 40 countries will exhibit work of exceptional quality, imagination and technical skill. The exhibitions are free of charge to the public, with much of the work for sale or commission - ranging from paintings to prints, glassware to jewellery and furniture to textiles. Buyers have the opportunity to invest right at the beginning of an artist or designer's career, with 15% of sales going towards the Royal College of Art Student Fund.
"Show RCA 2012 will be the largest student exhibition the College has ever presented," said Dr Paul Thompson, Rector of the Royal College of Art. "As the Fine Art programmes prepare to come together at the extended Battersea campus this autumn, we're really pleased to be able to open up the new Dyson building to show work here for the first time. And we hope by having two Design programmes showing in Battersea this will bring a new audience to the area, making it the most successful graduate show in the RCA's 175 year history."