The Show RCA 2012 rescued for GC by its Kensington exhibits

Contuse: Jane Hunt (photo: Matthew Booth)

Having taken so strongly against the Battersea arm of the Royal College of Art's student summer show, I feel bound to admit how much I enjoyed today's visit to the Show RCA 2012 exhibition in Kensington Gore.
To me relevance is key in Art whether of the senses or the material world. I found little in Battersea to admire among what are broadly Fine Art programmes. The extra space afforded by the site seems to have engendered isolation from the world outside.
The opposite was true in the design-led Kensington show.
Of course, there is a functionality about disciplines such as jewellery, fashion, and vehicle design, which helps the cause of making relevant. But painting and sculpture should do so too.
What I mean is best summed up in the blown glass work of Jane Hunt showing at Kensington, an example of which heads this post.
Firstly, she has created a thing of beauty, which pleases the eye. There is something of the anatomical in the work. Hunt has taken a bubble of molten glass and, for our gaze, has frozen the relationship between the core and the surface and vice versa.
I dare say if I cared to invest in her work - prices start from £325 - there would be pleasure to be had from just holding the piece.