Class of 2024: RA Schools
Spotlighting 4 graduating artists
Last week one of the UK's foremost art schools opened its graduate showcase at London’s Royal Academy of Art.
RA Schools is the longest-running school of Fine Art in the UK (founded in 1769) and remains the only tuition-free art school, awarding rare and competitive spaces to the top emerging talents. Its reputation speaks for itself, with alumni that include successful artists such as Rachel Jones, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Issy Wood. Some students even achieve significant success before graduation. Notably, whilst only in his second year of the course, Pascal Sender was chosen for the inaugural exhibition at the reputable Saatchi Yates Gallery in October 2020.
This year, the newly renovated studio spaces designed by David Chipperfield Architects, provide a stunning backdrop for the graduating class of 2024 to present their works. We are spotlighting the work of four standout artists from this year’s cohort: Lizzie Munn, Fungai Benhura, Norberto Spina, and Ilze Aulmane.
The RA Schools Show runs until June 30th, 2024. See our calendar for details of other graduate shows opening across the UK:
Lizzie Munn (b. 1995)
Lizzie Munn’s practice spans painting, printmaking and site-specific installation. It is centred on an abstract exploration of painting’s fundamentals - colour, shape, pictorial space, gesture and surface. Overlaid paper becomes a complex visual language where forms appear, disappear and repeat. In addition to her graduate presentation, Munn was selected for this year’s prestigious flag commission in collaboration with Art in Mayfair and New West End Company. Her series of flag-based works entitled The Sun Speaks is currently flying high above Bond Street until July 7th.
Fungai Benhura (b. 1990)
Benhura’s work is made up of multiple layers of different materials. Each layer represents a history that has been buried and rediscovered. The end product unveils a painting that has a character and personality of its own. His process of constructing and deconstructing means that his works continuously transform into something else, existing in a state somewhere between creation and destruction.
Norberto Spina (b. 1995)
Norberto Spina’s practice draws on both autobiographical and collective memory. Spina reworks and superimposes imagery from a number of sources including archive images, old family photographs, moments of daily life and religious iconographies of Italian popular culture. In doing so his textured compositions, conjured through strokes of oil, acrylic and marker pen, build and at the same time conceal an image in a continuous act of formulation and negation.
Ilze Aulmane (b. 1982)
Aulmane’s graduate presentation combines paintings, digital prints, props and ephemera to form the installation Mood Board for My Garage (2024). Located in a space of constant transit within the Royal Academy, Aulmane’s site also hosts her 10 minute performance Where do we go from here (2024) at specified times throughout the shows run.
