Royal College of Art: Painting

Introducing Klara Fokicheva (@klara_fo ), an artist based in London.

Klara Fokicheva collects objects and materials surrendered by the city and landscape after dark. Fragments of bone, ceramic and driftwood salvaged from the Thames foreshore, remnants shaped by tide, soil, and time.

Rooted in animist and earth-centred belief, the practice understands objects and matter as carriers of spirit and memory, alive with what has passed through them.

Shaped by Eastern European folklore, where the forest has its own logic. What is encountered there at night is not resolved by morning. Fokicheva’s practice is built on the same understanding. Collected materials externalise an interior terrain most hesitate to enter.

The assembled paintings treat the wall as a portal, constructed through inherited knowledge of how objects placed with intention open rather than close.
What rises in the viewer was already there.

Studio portrait by @dariosollb

Artwork list:

1. Don’t Preach the Sterile, 2026. Oil, acrylic, clay, Thames branches and French log on wood, 170 × 155 cm

2. That Which Cannot be Destroyed, 2026. Oil, acrylic, clay, branches, 44 × 39 cm

3. The Steppe at Night, 2026. Oil, acrylic, clay, branches, 78 × 65 cm

4. Untitled, 2026. Oil on wood, 11 x 13 cm