Epson and the Royal Academy Schools

At London’s prestigious Royal Academy Schools, students of contemporary fine art are able to explore their creativity in the Epson Suite, where the Royal Academy and Epson have collaborated on a collection of large format printers, graphics scanners and projectors. Enabling the students to access the latest Epson digital technology is helping to nurture their creativity, while familiarising them with new technologies. Take a sneak peek at this new video that shows how they’re using it.

The Epson Suite at the Royal Academy

Watch the video here.

Founded in 1796, the RA Schools offers 17 artists each year the opportunity to take part in a three-year programme featuring a variety of lectures and tutorials by leading contemporary artists, Royal Academicians, critics and writers. Epson has worked together with the school for many years and the Epson Suite currently houses a new SC-P20000, which has won the approval of staff and students alike.

Mark Hampson, Artist and Head of Fine Art Processes, RA Schools, explains: “In the 1990s, the RA Schools made a conscious decision to modernise and contemporise. When digital printing first became known as a possible fine art medium, the RA began to collaborate with Epson. Originally that started off on a small scale and then we built the Epson Suite, which provides technology and machinery to facilitate the printing of large format digital works. The students use the Epson technologies in many different ways: for some, it will be creating a film, for others it will be high-end photography. And just when we think we know all the given forms, they redefine that by doing something unexpected with it.”

Barton Hargreaves, Artist and Digital Print Tutor, RA Schools, has been using large format digital printing in his work for a long time, and Epson printers since 2005. He says, “The new SC-P20000 that we have here is very, very fast. The quality, the sharpness, the clarity…in the past, I’ve felt you had to be a certain distance away from the artwork – and you can get closer, and closer, and closer to the artwork now and the detail holds up which is amazing.”

Maciej Urbanek, Artist and Photography Tutor, RA Schools, has more to add: “The new printer SC-P20000 has been a great addition to the Epson Suite here in the RA. The printing itself takes about one third of the time that it used to take. I was afraid that such speed might compromise the accuracy or the colour intensity, but it’s actually completely the opposite. The printers give more and more possibilities of printing more colours, of printing broader tonal ranges, and printing more accurate gradation.”

Richard Hampson concludes, “Epson set us up on our journey to look at the possibilities of new technologies to align ourselves with the modern world and effectively helped change, or bolster, the whole philosophy of the new art school.”

Watch the video here to see these amazing artists working with the Epson SC-P20000.