SLIK ROAD

Silk road: Victoria Rowley on her provocative prints and the slow nature of making

It being 2017, things are difficult enough for young art graduates in London, career-wise. One imagines it's even more difficult to move into a medium as niche as oriental silk printing, and trickier still to cover these delicate silks with images of phalluses. Convention, or the easy path, doesn't seem to be Victoria Rowley's thing. At just 25, she has posed nude for photographer Grace Vane Percy, tried her hand at burlesque dancing and won an international graduate award for her London College of Fashion collection.

Now, her silk prints are the subject of a new exhibition at Opium Den, a bar housed in the basement of Pan Asian restaurant Nam Long Le Shaker. The South Kensington hotspot gained cult status in the 1980s, attracting thirsty celebrities with its potent 'Flaming Ferrari' cocktail, still on the menu. Rowley's colourful silks line the walls, at once standing out and fitting in, among an amalgam of Oriental and Western artworks.