Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2008 / London

The New Contemporaries

In the largest selection in some years, Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2008 introduces the work of 57 artists selected by Richard Billingham, Ceal Floyer and Ken Lum.

Open to all final year graduates and post-graduates of Fine Art at British Colleges and Universities, New Contemporaries is the UK’s longest running art competition for emerging artists. This year’s submission attracted over 1,400 applications and the resulting selection of artists presents a dynamic mix of works that are physical, strong, figurative and bold, with work ranging from painting and photography to taxidermy, waxworks and installation. The powerful, bright, spatial, tableaux paintings by Ellen Macdonald seem to cross a film set for The Borrowers with contemporary high-pitched Futurism. littlewhitehead’s bodies turned away, look, concentrated into the corner. Realistic, sinister, life size; they make the outsider appear to interrupt a plot, perhaps something is happening, perhaps it already has. Assembled out of very familiar objects, St George tilts forward with resolution. Jeanine Woollard seems to have raided the office and cupboard under the stairs in order to balance splendid ambition with brash reality.

Steve Bishop’s sculpture very simply combines the real with the speculative; a stuffed fox has been thrown into the air to be caught, suspended, in a cruciform of light rays. Speared through and through, it is a contemporary San Sebastian, referring to religious painting and modern sculpture. A hilarious downbeat video, by Giles Ripley, a homely comedy, about the every day life of a very hard up young man shows the artist, as subject, walking to the letter box only to forget to post the letter. In an hilarious account, he describes how an innocent application to re paint a local pub sign manages to insult in the process.

Esther Teichmann’s photograph of a woman leaning away is a quiet textural study of surface; the pink dressing gown, outline of armchair and very slightly grubby feet, builds up a persistent portrait. Paul Bratt’s animation with lumpy, but touching, puppets creates a convincing picture of love. Jumping up, quite high, onto the park bench, the woolly, wooden, roughly assembled man silently persists with his attention to tentatively take her hand.

The London exhibition of Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2008 at the Club Row space follows the inaugural show at the A Foundation on Greenland Street in September, as part of the Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art.

Artists 2008: Pio Abad, Adam Ajina, Allsopp & Weir, Guler Ates, Steve Bishop, Paul Bratt, Stewart Cliff, Beth Collar, Alexia de Ville de Goyet, Joe Doldon, Jeremy Evans, Anwen Handmer, Chris Hanlon, Gabriel Hartley, Gerd Hasler, Neil Hedger,Tyler Bright Hilton, Sam Holden, Alex Hudson, Peter Joslyn, Emmanuel Kazi Kakai, Eva Kalpadaki, Katharina Kiebacher, Rinat Kotler, Raakhee Lakhtaria, Andrew Larkin, Ian Law, littlewhitehead, Joseph Long, Jo Longhurst, Ellen Macdonald, Allison Maletz, Jane Maughan, Sarah Michael, Haroon Mirza, Yoca Muta, Gemma Nelson, Sachiyo Nishimura, Yo Okada, Joep Overtoom, Heather Phillipson, Patricia Pinsker, Giles Ripley, Constance Slaughter, Rita Soromenho, Naomi St Clair-Clarke, David Stearn, Nicholas Tayler, Esther Teichmann, David Theobald, Jason Underhill, Manuel Vazquez, Lara Viana, Jane Ward, Anita Wernstrom, Paul Westcombe, Jeanine Woollard.

Bloomberg newContemporaries 2008
57 artists selected from UK Art schools by Richard Billingham, Ceal Floyer and Ken Lum.

Künstler 2008
Pio Abad, Adam Ajina, Allsopp & Weir, Guler Ates, Steve Bishop, Paul Bratt, Stewart Cliff, Beth Collar, Alexia de Ville de Goyet, Joe Doldon, Jeremy Evans, Anwen Handmer, Chris Hanlon, Gabriel Hartley, Gerd Hasler, Neil Hedger,Tyler Bright Hilton, Sam Holden, Alex Hudson, Peter Joslyn, Emmanuel Kazi Kakai, Eva Kalpadaki, Katharina Kiebacher, Rinat Kotler, Raakhee Lakhtaria, Andrew Larkin, Ian Law, littlewhitehead, Joseph Long, Jo Longhurst, Ellen Macdonald, Allison Maletz, Jane Maughan, Sarah Michael, Haroon Mirza, Yoca Muta, Gemma Nelson, Sachiyo Nishimura, Yo Okada, Joep Overtoom, Heather Phillipson, Patricia Pinsker, Giles Ripley, Constance Slaughter, Rita Soromenho, Naomi St Clair-Clarke, David Stearn, Nicholas Tayler, Esther Teichmann, David Theobald, Jason Underhill, Manuel Vazquez, Lara Viana, Jane Ward, Anita Wernstrom, Paul Westcombe, Jeanine Woollard