Royal College of Art announces the MA Curating Contemporary Art Shows 2022

Saturday 7 May, 2 – 5 pm: Book launch

Southwark Park Galleries, 1 Park Approach, Southwark Park, London, SE16 2UA

For us, to share explores ideas of home via food, spice, and the in-between space of translation with students from the Bosco Centre in Rotherhithe. The group, all of whom currently call Southwark home, includes refugees, migrants, asylum seekers and other local residents, who came together to share stories, recipes and food. Over four workshops with artist Saima Rasheed and mother tongues, a local and global multidisciplinary collective, the young people explored local history archives, painted with herbs and spices, and translated their own recipes of home through multiple forms of media to create a visual recipe book that brings different cultures into one place.

Artists: mother tongues and Saima Rasheed

Participants: Students from the Bosco Centre

MA curators: Alexa Chow, Kaia Goodenough, Chloe Hughes, Amani Mitha, Yujia Wang, AA Xie, Sarah Yang and Jenny Zhang

Further information

Wednesday 11 May, 5 – 8pm: Exhibition preview and tall

Wednesday 11 May – Saturday 16 July: Open to the public / Wednesday – Saturday, 12 – 5pm

LUX, Waterlow Park Centre, Dartmouth Park Hill, London, N19 5JF

Grace Ndiritu - An Absolute River explores non-linear temporality and questions the relevance of conventional divisions between past, present and future. Inspired by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges and fictionalised as the main protagonist in Ndiritu’s latest film Black Beauty (2021), the exhibition title reflects on his theories on the fluidity of time. The film will be screened along with Ndiritu’s earlier films A Week in the News (2010), in the LUX library, and Raiders of the Lost Ark (2015), screened online for the first week of the exhibition. The accompanying public programme will imagine alternative timescapes through workshops, performance and text.

Artists: Jason Allen-Paisant, Serena Huang, Grace Ndiritu and Rieko Whitfield

MA curators: Kirsty Flockhart, Sanya Malik, Lorenzo Menegazzo, Livia Nervi, Mala Yamey, Kit Wan Yeong, Fei Xu and Jieyi Zhang

Further information

Friday 13 May, 7 – 9:30 pm:  Discussion and live performance 

Saturday 14 May, 12 – 4 pm: Drop-in workshop

Camden Art Centre, Arkwright Road, London, NW3 6DG

It Matters What Happens Next considers the origins of care and the transition between states of ‘caring’ to being ‘cared for. Working with residents from Spring Grove Care Home, neighbouring Camden Art Centre, artists Youngsook Choi and Eva Freemen explore themes of vulnerability, strength, resilience and institutional care. The resulting conversations, physical objects and images form part of a live performance and temporary installation by the two artists. This new commission is accompanied by a public programme of events that reflect on the importance of everyday care in our contemporary world.

Artists and Contributors: Youngsook Choi and Eva Freemen, Lucy Steggals and The People Speak

Participants: Residents from Spring Grove Care Home

MA curators: Pierce Eldridge, Chuhan Luo, Holly Pines, Yuwei Ren, Mohan Shao, Ruidi Sun and Yangjie Zhang

Further information

Wednesday 18 – Sunday 22 May: Open to the public / Wednesday – Sunday, 12 – 6pm

Gasworks, 155 Vauxhall Street, London, SE11 5RH

Between the Deep Blue is a project inspired by Juha Pekka Matias Laakkonen’s work 'Framed Sea Cow' - a tribute to the extinct animal - and writer Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ book Undrowned (2020) which highlights the sea cow’s rebirth as a symbol of the ocean’s witnessing of traumatic experiences. This public programme aims to commune with the wounds of triangular slave trading and its present legacies. Participants are invited to question how we can transform past traumatic histories into new ways of living and healing through a series of ocean-themed workshops and events held in an immersive space at Gasworks created by artists Ambrose Rhapsody Murray and Robertina Šebjanič.

Contributors: Veronica Amon, Kathyrn Attril, Ella Frost, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Lateisha Davine Lovelace-Hanson, Aisha Mirza, Ambrose Rhapsody Murray, Sacha Nicette, Soha Salem and Robertina Šebjanič

MA curators: Carianne Annan, Isabelle Lily Cain, Jeanne de La Masselière, Weiduo Liu, Mattie O’Callaghan, Antoine Schafroth, JinYao Wang and Aleksandra Wojt

Further information

Saturday 21 May – onwards: Open to the public

Camley Street Natural Park, 12 Camley Street, London, N1C 4PW

WaterWays restores and regenerates broken relationships between humans and the living organisms of the Regent's Canal. The project explores the canal’s biodiversity and lived histories to understand and challenge the way we generate, collect and store environmental data. The testimonies collected here come from a broad range of fields: scientists engaged in research, academics and students from Central St Martins working on projects to protect the ecosystem, local inhabitants closely linked to the aquatic environment, as well as artists and creative practitioners. A new website, designed by the collective Applied Logic, presents an open resource archive, recordings of the voices of water and project documentation, along with a digital game for data collection created by the design studio AusBlau.

Artists: Applied Logic and AusBlau

MA curators: Marjorier Ding, Yixiong Cui, Chiara Famengo, Kylee Kim, Jiaqi Liu and Fergus Wiltshire

Further information

Supporters for the RCA’s MA Curating Contemporary Art Shows 2022: Arts Council England, Bosco Centre, BossCoffee and Spring Grove Care Home.