Royal College of Art Artist Talks
- Lucy Archer
- Apr 1, 2017
- 2 min read
Neena Percy
When Percy first began at the Royal College, she had a thin, glossy painting style. Her BA show was a turning point in her practice as she experimented by squeezing thickened acrylic paint through an icing bag. To expand her practice, she painted in ways that made her feel uncomfortable to push the boundaries of her work so she couldn’t restrict herself. Through that experimentation, she was taking painting into the sculptural realm. A recurring theme in her work is thinking about the clichés of the romance genre. There are also references to food, but its plastic and malleable. Looking at a gothic style, she next experimented by hanging her work from a wall rather than it being attached to a frame or canvas. Ideas of metamorphosis are seen throughout her new style of working, perhaps referencing her own change in style. She believes that art and magic overlap through representation, as if the art is coming to life. Amelia Jones and self-image is key in Percy’s research. The thought of art being the flesh of the world, and bringing touch back to the image intrigued her. After this research, she attempted to bring more flesh to her own work. Percy also looks at classical portraits, but she only ever sees the appearance, since in those days, that’s all the artist was trying to capture. More recently, she has enjoyed finding the links between past and present representation.
Jade Fadojutimi
Common themes of Fadojutimi’s work are a sense of belonging or lack of, trauma, identity, with elements of escapism. In her methodology, she likes finding things within the paint. Her initial style was quite wish washy. She created an environment in the painting, responding to the marks and finding the landscape. She is very interested in sub-culture, including Japanese cartoons; her work had similar aesthetics to a group called Kawaii. After this period of work however, she attempted to entirely change her practice and style. She wanted more abstraction in her work, but also links between the body and the place. Fadojutimi never planned her paintings, she went straight into them, skipping the drawing stage that most do to plan a painting. However, while she was distracted she began drawing, and now takes elements from those drawings and puts them into her paintings. While working, she’ll often turn a painting around to see it from different perspectives.
