> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.catapult-platform.art/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Proof of Looking - David Hanes Graduation Show - URL: https://www.catapult-platform.art/david-hanes-at-i-look-at-royal-college-of-art-london/ - Published: 2026-08-19T03:22:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-20T07:09:07.000Z - Description: David Hanes shows I Look at the Royal College of Art Degree Show in London. Twenty small oil paintings drawn from five years of travel, now featured by Catapult Contemporary - Author: Dominique Catherina Foertig - Tags: Exhibition, Painting, Memory & Identity ## Royal College of Art Presents **David Hanes**, *I Look* in London **The** [**Royal College of Art**](https://www.rca.ac.uk/?ref=catapult-platform.art) presented I Look by [**David Hanes**](https://www.davidhanes.info/?ref=catapult-platform.art) as part of the MA Painting Postgraduate Show in London, on view 18 to 21 June 2026. A painting can work like a diary entry that skips the words. What survives is the fact of a moment, and the colour it left behind. That is a small claim for a picture to make, and it turns out to be enough. --- **I Look** **Artist:** David Hanes **Exhibition:** I Look, MA Painting Postgraduate Show **Venue:** [ Royal College of Art ](https://www.rca.ac.uk/?ref=catapult-platform.art) **City:** London, United Kingdom **Dates:** 18 June 2026 – 21 June 2026 **Image Courtesy:** Courtesy the artist --- For the MA Painting Postgraduate Show at the **Royal College of Art**, [**David Hanes** ](https://www.catapult-platform.art/david-hanes-a-global-journey-through-paint-and-memory/)hung twenty small oil paintings in a tight grid on a single white wall. From across the room the installation reads as a field of colour, almost abstract. Up close, each canvas opens into its own scene, with forests, cabins, mountains, a river and fragments of built space. All of them come out of studies made across five years of travel, repainted at the scale of a postcard and framed in plain oak. ![David Hanes, I Fear Safety, 2025, oil painting of an orange cabin with green roof in a dark snowy forest at night](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/07/david-hanes-i-look-rca-london-2026-work-i-fear-safety.webp) ****David Hanes,** I Fear Safety, oil on canvas, 25 × 30 cm, 2025\. Courtesy the artist. ![David Hanes, In the Pines, 2026, oil painting of a wall of red and green trees above a pale green field](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/07/david-hanes-i-look-rca-london-2026-work-in-the-pines.webp) David Hanes, In the Pines, oil on canvas, 2026\. Courtesy the artist In *I Fear Safety*, an orange cabin with a mint green roof sits low in night snow, the forest behind it built from near-black violet strokes. The windows stay dark. The house glows without inviting. *Placeless* pushes furthest from description, an ochre diagonal cutting through layers of teal, closer to a stain than a view, and the title does the rest. In *Waiting for the Thaw*, an orange sun radiates over a cold river in streaks that take up half the canvas, weather turned into directional mark. ![David Hanes, Waiting for the Thaw, 2026, oil painting of an orange sunburst over a river, bushes and forest](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/07/david-hanes-i-look-rca-london-2026-work-waiting-for-the-thaw.webp) David Hanes, Waiting for the Thaw, oil on canvas, 30 × 24 cm, 2026\. Courtesy the artist. The title of the show points to **On Kawara** and his logging of bare existence, date by date. Hanes borrows the notation, each painting stating I looked here, then floods it with temperature. Colour announces not what was seen but what it felt like to see it. At a moment when most travel images are made in half a second and scrolled past in less, spending five years returning to the same encounters is its own position. These are places filtered through memory and distance until only the essential heat remains. ### Sketches Carried for Years **David Hanes**, born 1987 in Toronto, is a Canadian and American painter based between London and Berlin. His process begins outdoors, with hand-held observational sketches made on site during his travels, quick notes of light, colour and atmosphere. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/07/david-hanes-i-look-rca-london-2026-work-placeless.webp) ****David Hanes,** Placeless, oil on canvas, 2026\. Courtesy the artist. ![David Hanes, Trees and the Ground, 2026, oil painting of dark green tree trunks on red ground against purple woods](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/07/david-hanes-i-look-rca-london-2026-work-trees-and-the-ground.webp) ****David Hanes**, Trees and the Ground, oil on canvas, 2026\. Courtesy the artist. He sometimes holds on to them for years before they resurface in the studio as colour-driven oil paintings. Shelters, horizons, forests and skies keep coming back, out of concern rather than nostalgia. "Painting is my exchange with a vital and restless world," he says. The degree show lasted four days. The paintings, small enough to carry, look built for a longer trip. Read the full interview at Catapult Contemporary: [David Hanes: A Global Journey Through Paint and Memory](https://www.catapult-platform.art/david-hanes-a-global-journey-through-paint-and-memory/). [**Instagram David Hanes**](https://www.instagram.com/davidhanes.info/?ref=catapult-platform.art) ![David Hanes, I Look, Royal College of Art, London, Catapult Contemporary exhibiton review](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/07/david-hanes-i-look-rca-degree-show-london-2026-hero-1.webp) ****David Hanes**, I Look (installation view), MA Painting Postgraduate Show, Royal College of Art, London, 2026\. Courtesy the artist **About Catapult Contemporary - Art Platform Submission** This is a exhibition review published by Catapult — an independent editorial platform for contemporary art, based in Vienna. We publish exhibition reviews, artist features, interviews, and critical context, with a focus on emerging and mid-career practices from Europe and beyond. [catapult.art](https://www.catapult-platform.art/) Want to be featured? [Submit your work →](https://www.catapult-platform.art/submit/) --- [Artist in Focus](https://www.catapult-platform.art/artist-in-focus/) ## Jordan Sullivan: In a Country Without a Name [Read More](https://www.catapult-platform.art/jordan-sullivan-artist-in-focus-drawing-beyond-boundaries-in-in-a-country-without-a-name) [Exhibition](https://www.catapult-platform.art/exhibition/) ## Hans Op de Beeck: Whispered Tales [Read More](https://www.catapult-platform.art/hans-op-de-beeck) [Interview](https://www.catapult-platform.art/interview/) ## David Hanes: A Global Journey Through Paint and Memory [Read More](https://www.catapult-platform.art/david-hanes-a-global-journey-through-paint-and-memory)