Key details
Date
- 26 March 2013
Author
- RCA
Read time
- 1 minute
This year’s RCA Secret Sale has raised £111,000 for the College Fine Art Student Award Fund, which offers bursaries for students needing financial support to study. The annual sale – now in its twentieth year – has raised £1m to date, helping ensure the most talented artists can study at the RCA, regardless of income.
Key details
Date
- 26 March 2013
Author
- RCA
Read time
- 1 minute
Almost 2,500 of the total 2,700 post-card size artworks by both emerging and established artists including David Bailey, Paula Rego, Julian Opie and Nick Park were sold for just £45 at the RCA's Battersea campus last weekend (23 March).
Contemporary artist Julian Opie generously donated four paintings of minimal blue and green landscapes. Portugese painter Paula Rego drew three black and white drawings of her signature fairytale-like characters, including a fairy being squashed by a hand. Sculptor Yinka Shonibare drew a series of small circles with his signature African fabric in the centre of each one.
Renowned photographer David Bailey submitted six colourful pen drawings with African imagery and a giant female rabbit. Animator Nick Park’s postcards included several animal characters including a cross-eyed frog and his famous Wallace reading a book entitled 'Life without pie, a horror story'. Meanwhile, film-maker Mike Leigh’s pen sketches depicted a series of characters peering over a red frame within the postcard.
Across the fashion sphere, Sir Paul Smith drew a collection of birds, while Orla Kiely painted her trademark flower design. Christopher Bailey’s card depicted an intricate paper-cut scene of London landmarks and shoe-designer Manolo Blahnik contributed a colourful drawing of a high-heel with a pointy toe.
Guitarist John Squire found time from rehearsing with the Stone Roses to make a postcard reading IOU in tiny plastic letters stuck to the card.
From architecture and design, Zaha Hadid submitted a black and white graphic of what could be the inspiration for a new building and inventor Sir James Dyson submitted a series of drawings that included the internal workings of a vacuum cleaner.
The annual postcard fundraiser works on the basis of artists associated with the College donating postcard-sized works, which remain anonymous until they are bought and the artist’s signature on the back is revealed.
All of the postcards along with the artists' names can be viewed here.