Evolutions: RSA Award Winners in Focus

Mathieu Cardosi received the RSA David Michie Travel Award in 2023, choosing to travel to Berlin to build a body of work around abandoned buildings in and around the city. He said of this experience 'I was interested in buildings with specific historical significance, but also in more mundane locations, that might epitomise a specific style of architecture, tell everyday stories, or preserve specific artifacts - inviting visitors to project themselves into Berlin's past. This project was also the opportunity to further reflect on the affective and archival power of abandoned buildings, explore how a community responds to its derelict architecture, and ultimately build a body of work that captures the indescribable aura of these abandoned spaces.'

Emma Hall travelled to Japan after receiving the RSA David Michie Travel Award in 2022, where she explored the many formal gardens of Kyoto. She was inspired by the manipulation of form and the spiritual labour she encountered in both public and private garden spaces. From those surrounding religious temples to those of a more impromptu nature, lining roads or sprouting outside restaurants, the meticulously arranged gardens of Kyoto influenced Emma to create this series of paintings. These painted 'virtual gardens' channel the glitchy, fantastical aesthetics and unique space making mechanisms she encountered in her travels.

Rosalind Lawless was awarded the 2022 RSA William Littlejohn Award for Water-Based Media, which enabled her to embark on a period of development, experimental research and making at Porthmeor studios in St Ives. Rosalind spent time connecting and sharing discourse with artists from wide-ranging backgrounds at Porthmeor, as well as exploring the Tate St Ives. She drew influence from her immediate surroundings, working outdoors in various locations in St Ives, intuitively experimenting with observed forms and unconventional techniques to visualise the historical, architectural and cultural significance of the area.

The artist duo of Charlotte Maishman and Guendalina Rota won the RSA Barns-Graham Travel Award in 2022. The award enabled them to engage in a sensory exploration of caves in their respective homelands, where they immersed themselves physically, tapping into the formations’ primordial histories and geologies. Channelling the primal emotions brought on by these experiences, they created an intuitive body of work that ranged across mediums and has resulted in an installation 'which creates intimacy and, in a certain way, isolates us from external life, immersing the viewer with sounds, moving images, organic objects and earthly colours'.

Oana Stanciu received the RSA Morton Award for Lens-Based Media in 2021. Her practice involves photography and moving image and incorporates an improvisational blending of self-portraiture, performance and sculpture which manipulates the human body and its surroundings. This new body of work sees Oana merge her own form with that of furniture, deforming the shapes to set gesture against stillness and produce 'wearable furniture'. This project expands on ideas Oana first developed during her residencies at An Talla Solais and Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop which were supported by RSA Residencies for Scotland.

Felicity Saravia White, upon receiving the RSA Barns-Graham Travel Award in 2023, travelled to El Salvador to reconnect with her mother’s homeland. She toured extensively, visiting everything from cosmopolitan cities to rural villages, ancient archaeological sites to NGO offices. She hiked volcanoes, picked coffee and attended contemporary art events, all whilst engaging with local people on the cultural, social and environmental issues that affect them. Felicity collected culturally significant materials as well as documenting those used in traditional and modern Salvadoran architecture. She was inspired by this architecture, and by the Salvadoran community radio station Radio Victoria, to create an installation which reflects on the situation of media in the political climate of El Salvador and in our modern global era.