Jean Jullien’s top five picks from the RCA grad show

It’s grad show season, the culmination of years of hard work for creative students, and a chance for design fans to discover some of the freshest expressions of ideas around. One of the most visited and notable in London is that of the Royal College of Art – a master’s institution that has produced renowned alumni across all creative disciplines from David Hockney to Tracey Emin. One of said alumni is prolific artist and illustrator Jean Jullien, who’s had a gander through this year’s crop from the RCA’s School of Communications (which he studied within), and picked out five of his favourite creatives and projects from the show, to platform on It’s Nice That. Visually and conceptually eclectic, the selection spans animation, sculpture and collage, tackling everything from queer parenthood to AI and ecology.

Derek Miller Hurtado: Deconstructing Dreams, Reconstructing Nightmares

Derek’s project Deconstructing Dreams, Reconstructing Nightmares uses collage to take a critical look at the “carefully curated” facade of the fashion industry – in particular its unsustainable practices and “structural issues” – and reconstruct it to be “more truthful and transparent”.

Jean Jullien: “I loved the haunting shapes created by the disappearance of silhouettes. The inversion created by inverting what is normally seen. Twisting its purpose by emphasising its hollowness. Referencing a certain anonymisation of a population by occulting the obstructing avatars of the world they’ve suffered. The subject touched is more relevant than ever and using fiction and chimeras to explore it helps carry the message efficiently.”

Naaman Azhari: Threaded

Naaman Azhari is a British-Lebanese film director and animator already with a Bafta nomination under his belt. His RCA graduate film Threaded tells the life story of protagonist Faisal through his mother’s eyes on his wedding day, “weaving together memories and moments that have shaped him”.

JJ: “I liked the idea of using a physical object as a memorial and narrative device for something deeper. The animation is visually strong, playing on contrasts to lock in the viewer’s attention. The black void around the character and objects echoes nicely with a certain collective visualisation we’ve created of our psyches. It also gives a sense of intimacy that I found touching.”

Iuliia Fedorova, Mariia Timoshenko: Genesis

Mariia Timoshenko and Iuliia Fedorova’s animated short film Genesis aims to tell “queer stories about unique journeys to parenthood”. The duo’s approach brings familiar situations to fantastical scenarios, using otherworldly and fun plasticine-like 3D characters and landscapes.

JJ: “I found the subject universal but the angle taken really great. It feels like a novel, touching and sincere exploration of a theme that has been discussed so much that it could be redundant. Yet, I find the form unique and the result challenging. I would love to see how different textures and materiality could change the tone of each proposition. The plasticine models made me wonder what a more ‘tangible’ version could communicate. It’s a really refreshing project!”

Mika Tohmon: From Cliffs of Yet

Mika Tohmon undertook a year-long research project into the UK’s chalk landscape, starting in Margate with an eroded chalk stack they traced from the Cretaceous period to post-Anthropocene. From this, the artist created a collection of works including fossil-like items, “weaving poetic sentiment into digitally aided making” to examine our part in the Earth’s ecology at a grand scale.

JJ: “What the lives we live will leave behind is a very important question that we’ve been asking ourselves more and more recently. Taking note of our impact and seemingly unwillingness to diminish it, it seems fitting to point out what previous forms of vestige have taken. Exploring our future and questioning it is a very good way to take steps towards reducing the damage we’re doing. In that sense, I find Mika’s project beautifully poetic as much as it is provocative and useful for the betterment of our collective paths.”

Jiwon Jang: The Latent Chair

To produce these colourful geometric forms, Jiwon Jang looked at how AI perceives chairs, and “how humans might adopt AI’s processing methods for new insights”. Jiwon analysed chairs from different angles, broke down the structures and reconstructed them in new ways. The results, Jiwon says, “showcase human ingenuity through de-computational intelligence”.

JJ: “I love the simplicity and poetry of this project. Visually I find it beautiful but I also love how it echoes cubism in its deconstruction of what an object is and how we see it. It’s an interesting take on the use of AI as an active element as it poses Jiwon in a third party position of the process, making the artist collaborate with AI as if it was its own “eye”. I like the complexity of this relationship and how it recontextualises a process undertaken more than a century ago.”

The RCA School of Communications graduate show, The Festival of Communication, opens this evening, and continues on selected dates until 4 August – more information here.