Feature: Premiums: Royal Academy Schools Interim Exhibition 2010

Published: 11 February 2010
by JOHN EVANS

MASTER of horror the film-maker Dario Argento helped inspire Terribilitá, a five-metre banner which dominates one of the walls in Premiums, the students’ show at the Royal Academy.
The artist who has produced the digital print, Inez de Coo, explains: “I’ve created it from stills of horror films to make something beautiful out of the terrible.” The piece, one of about 50 by 16 postgraduates on show, also owes its inspiration to the musical of Busby Berkeley, says Inez, 27, who is Dutch and has degrees in biology from Leiden and fine art from The Hague. 
She has lived in Kentish Town for nearly a year. “It’s fantastic to show here in the Royal Academy. It’s an impressive and beautiful space,” she says. “Most of my work is about film. I’ve made a lot of changes in the last year and a half.”
That seems to be a key theme of Premiums; the emphasis is firmly on the need to display innovation as part of the develop­ment of the young artists at the halfway stage of their three-year post­graduate programme.
As schools’ curator Eliza Bonham Carter puts it, there’s a competi­tive edge: “Art is about making something new. It attracts the younger artists, their contem­poraries, everyone is seeing what everyone else is doing!” Sales of works are encouraged, to support the students. Prices start at £250 (£1,500 for Terribilitá).

• Premiums: Royal Academy Schools Interim Exhibition 2010, runs until Sunday in the Sackler Wing of the Galleries, Piccadilly. Admission free. www. royalacademy.org.uk/raschools