RA Schools Show 2021

Following a year-long pause due to Covid-19, the RA Schools Show returns. 16 artists – having just completed their postgraduate study at the RA Schools – transform their studio spaces to show new work.

The RA Schools is at the heart of the Royal Academy. Each year the RA Schools hold an exhibition of the final year students’ work, but due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 Schools Show didn’t go ahead. Instead, the Class of 2020 became the Class of 2020×1, and this year’s exhibition presents the culmination of four years’ study.

In 1920, Keeper Charles Sims RA declared that the RA Schools should be a centre for “research and experimentation”. 100 years later, the RA Schools Show comprises drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, installation, moving image, embroidery, performance and interventions into the fabric of the building itself. There is an installation exploring the use of electromagnetic fields in scientific research, a film-screening set within a labyrinth of aircraft fuselage, a polling station, a dust ball collection, a fish in a tank driving a Lamborghini and – maybe – a swimming pool atop the RA’s roof.

The Class of 2020×1 are already establishing their practices with presentations at Glasgow International, White Cube Viewing Rooms, South London Gallery, Kunstverein München, The Sunday Painter, Kupfer, Whitechapel Gallery, and New Contemporaries, among others.

Exhibiting artists: Ayo Akingbade, Irini Bachlitzanaki, Paul Barlow, Tania Blanco, Alexandre Canonico, Clara Hastrup, Harminder Judge, Toby Jury Morgan, Lidija Kononenko, Amanda Kyritsopoulou, Carlos Maria Romero aka Atabey Mamasita, Olu Ogunnaike, Liv Preston, Agnieszka Szczotka, Sofia Restorp, Jenkin van Zyl.