Artists-in-Residence July/August 2024
Saruha Kilaru, MA| Print
Saruha Kilaru, 25, is a recent graduate from MA Print at Royal College of Art. Her practice is driven by a high sensitivity to colour and its ever-influencing presence in our environment. She explores this through the meditative processes of repetitive mark making in multiple mediums.
Saruha has worked previously with the EFA Blackburn print studio in New York, and also exhibited multiple works at the Artbuzz studios in Delhi. Her works were also exhibited at the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair 2021 and Southwark Park Galleries along with Espacio gallery and Fine Liquids Art Gallery in 2022 in London. She has won the High Prize for artistic excellence in 2022 for her recent textile works emphasising on the aspect of touch. The same year, she was also selected for the Travers Smith Art Program 2022 to 2023 for her watercolour monoprints.
Clay Howard, MA | Painting
Clay Howard (Royal College of Art, UK / Art Students League, NY / Lewis and Clark College OR) is a San Francisco Bay Area born painter currently living in London. His satirical paintings reflect contemporary culture, as they expose the absurdity of human behaviour. His display of reptilian cartoon characters, scaly and green, embodies the outer skin humans use to present themselves to society.
His previous experiences include interning at The Aperture Foundation for The Steven A. Baron Work Scholar program in New York and as the lead Graphic Designer for the 10th issue of Beacon Quarterly Magazine in Portland, Oregon. This knowledge has brought an aspect of photographic composition, magazine culture, and storytelling into his visual language.
While travelling through India, he was told by his friends that “Clay’ in Hindi translated to “Slippery Dirt”. Since then, he has used the pseudonym Slippery Dirt satirically, as a play on his name and as a brand.