An exhibition of work in progress by students studying MA Print at the Royal College of Art.
Printing is, at its core, a gesture of transfer and translation. It occupies the liminal space between surfaces, where the image is neither wholly original nor entirely a copy, but something new that emerges through the act. This “in-between” is a fertile ground for exploring paradoxes: the manual and the mechanical, the singular and the reproducible, the material and the ephemeral. As Richard S. Field argues, printmaking is a manifestation of mirrored and binary thought, yet it is also a profoundly transgressive act, challenging fixed categories and opening pathways for reinterpretation. Within this practice, the surface becomes both a site of inscription and erasure, a stage where the physicality of material intersects with the abstractions of thought.
It is within this context—laden with the transformative potential that resonates deeply with the paradoxes of human existence, the desire to anchor something in time while acknowledging the inevitability of change—that the MA Print 2024/25 cohort at the Royal College of Art presents In Betweens. This exhibition serves as a space of inquiry for artists from diverse cultural backgrounds, exploring how images and meanings are constructed and deconstructed through processes of materialisation. More than a physical space, the “in-between” is a state of flux, where traditional and digital techniques converge, engaging with temporalities and geographies in dialogue.
In Betweens reflects on the potential of printmaking as a medium to question boundaries—between artist and work, originality and replication, permanence and mutability. It celebrates uncertainty and multiplicity, recognising artistic practice as a continuous process of being between, of shifting, and of reinvention.
