Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2007

About

The annual exhibition arrives out of an open submission from all art schools across the country.It is open to the final year graduating artists, current postgraduates and those who graduated in the previous 12 months. The selectors this year, artists Nigel Cooke (who first debuted in the show in 1998), Michael Landy and U.S based curator and academic Linda Norden have selected 37 of the most promising artists from an initial submission of 1,100.

The annual show provides the opportunity to view an emerging generation of new artists, each now embarking on the start of their professional careers. The fact that all the work has been rigorously discussed and then chosen by an independent panel of artists and experts is what helps make this show so unique.

Of course it is impossible to characterise the work selected for New Contemporaries. Collectively it does present particular moments, and experiences, a cross section of some of the most exciting and singular work to come out of current art school practice.

A hilarious take on the series, the Chuckle Brothers, has a strong artist Amy Grace McDonough driving her friend through a perfunctory re-staging of the TV programme under harsh physical conditions.

There is painting of such loose and lucid ability that it seems to hark back, or perhaps look forward, to a re-establishment of ease and facility, Katarina Forss. There is a large amount of painting in the show; Dido Hallett, Fiona Mackay, Luke Jackson, Adam Holmes-Davies, James Ryan. With less overall control of installation, more delicacy and privacy than ever, Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2007 provides a one to one range of work as well.

The sculptural work moves from the very staged, yet somewhat diminutive, statue of an iconic working male painter which is also an active fountain, Heike Kabisch, through to a body of work by Sarah Bowker-Jones in which the slightest use of materials only just manages to give its presence a worthwhile appearance.

Photographs of North Korea by Charlie Crane provide a seemingly straightforward relation between formal clarity and documentary information, though mediated by state propaganda while a series of photographs by Gesche Wurfel of the hinterland of pre-Olympic east London shows a moment of captured transience.

Over the years, New Contemporaries has consistently provided artists with their first public exposure. This show is part of a long tradition stretching back to 1949, when a group of young graduates from Greater London art schools was first shown at the Mall Galleries.

Artists
Steve Bishop, Sarah Bowker-Jones, Lucy Coggle, Rhys Coran, Charlie Crane, Mary Ferguson, David Fletcher, Katarina Forss, Alistair Frost, Dido Hallett, Gabriel Hartley, Alexander Heim, Laurie Hill, Margot Hill, Adam Holmes-Davies, Luke Jackson, Jackson Webb, Hannah James, Heike Kabisch, Maria-Brigita Karantzi, Camilla Kesterton, Penny Klepuszewska, Ian Larson, Francisco Lobo, Fiona Mackay, Amy Grace McDonough, Janine McLellan, Andrew Mealor, Jason Nelson, Jack Newling, Gemma Pardo, Daniel Pasteiner, James Ryan, Charlie Tweed, Tom Walker, Gesche Würfel, Yohei Yashi.