IRL/URL – Exhibition (16th - 29th July 2021)
“The IRL / URL exhibition and publication harks back to the year 2020ZC*, before the birth of the Zoomniverse, in a time free of mandatory face masks and social distancing.”
(Finchitida Finch RCA, JaM Graduate 2020)
Last Summer, for the first time in its history, the RCA’s renowned MA Jewellery and Metal graduate show went virtual. Covid-19 and the lockdown in March presented what felt, at the time, like insurmountable challenges: The soldering hearth torches were extinguished the hammer room fell silent, enamelling kilns were left to cool and student work lay abandoned and unfinished in bench skins. The inevitable frustrations that arose quickly turned to resilience as the class of 2020 devised new modes of expression in a ‘virtual’ world.