Class of 2025: Royal College of Art

The next stop on our London MA degree show tour

Jul 03, 2025

A few weeks ago, we visited the Royal College of Art’s degree show, the next stop on our London MA degree show tour. This year we focused on the RCA Painting presentation, where graduating artists delivered an ambitious and expansive showcase. The works on display reflected a broad range of themes and materials, offering a glimpse into the shifting concerns and preoccupations shaping this emerging generation.

Among the standouts was Laura Dzelzytė’s Next Day Delivery (After Botticelli) (2025), a clever deconstruction of Botticelli’s The Cestello Annunciation (1489-90) reimagined through the visual language of delivery packaging, pointing to ideas of reproduction, consumerism and cultural symbolism. Jinseul Park’s delicate mixed media work on Hanji brought a quiet intimacy to the space, while Ali Bartlett’s dedication to light and shadow revealed both technical mastery and a quiet confidence in the kind of painter she is becoming. Malca Mizrahi’s bold Self-portrait with C-Section invited visceral comparisons to Jenny Saville, foregrounding the raw physicality of the female body.

Gemma Holzer’s hybrid forms combined painting and sculpture in a series of fragmented stone-like canvases, bound together with steel and chain, drawing on both ancient and industrial references. Demi Danka’s experimental use of chemicals on light-sensitive emulsion paper resulted in striking, unpredictable textures, alive with colour and energy. Lyla Dushas spoilt us with her dreamlike figures, rendered in soft, inviting tones that left us wanting more. Tiyana Mitchell captured the humour and nostalgia of a shared moment (stacking objects on a sleeping friend) rendered with warmth and character. And finally, Zoë Wilkinson’s large monochrome tapestry, softly illuminated by summer light, held its own in the hallway, commanding attention through its scale, composition and bold use of colour.

This year’s RCA Painting show felt like a dynamic snapshot of a generation negotiating their place in the world and we can’t wait to see what they do next!

Selected works from the show below: