East 17 star Brian Harvey takes centre stage at student's Royal Academy show

Now 15 years later, she has turned the singer in Nineties boyband East 17 - named after the Walthamstow postcode in which he grew up - into the star of her art college graduation show.

A photo of Harvey from a cover of an East 17 annual is the inspiration for her piece, called We Can All Admire All We See, But In The End We Can Only Choose One, which is on sale for £2,500 at the Royal Academy Schools show.

Carvell, who lives in Hackney, said: "I was obsessed with East 17. I grew up in Hemel Hempstead, but my dad used to drive me around Walthamstow looking for Brian. We never found him but we met this guy in a car park who claimed to be his mate."

East 17 formed with Harvey as lead singer in 1992 and had several Top 10 hits, including the No 1, Stay Another Day. But he was sacked in 1997 after boasting of taking ecstasy.

The band split but have since attempted a comeback. In 2001 Harvey was attacked with a machete outside a Nottingham nightclub, and in 2005 he was run over by his own car in a freak accident, breaking his pelvis and leg.

Carvell said: "He was the rebel. So my work is looking at him from a distance, more disenchanted."

Friends urged her to invite Harvey to take a look, but she said: "I'd hate that. I don't want to meet him. It would be a big let-down."

Carvell is one of 18 students in the show. Others include Joanna Bryniarska and Alex Knell.

Bryniarska 28, from Swindon, works with digital prints to show how history repeats itself in painting.

In The Reading by Knell, 31, from Chiswick, visitors sit at a table and listen to tarot card readings through headsets when they touch hands.

The show runs until 28 June, with admission free, in the RA Schools studios in Piccadilly at the rear of the Academy.