Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2015

From November 25, 2015 to January 24, 2016, the ICA welcomes back Bloomberg New Contemporaries to its galleries for the sixth year running.

With a record number of applicants, 37 artists have been selected from open submission by this year’s panel: Hurvin Anderson, Jessie Flood-Paddock (New Contemporaries 2006) and Simon Starling (New Contemporaries 1994). These selected artists now join an illustrious roster of New Contemporaries alumni that includes Tacita Dean, Mona Hatoum, Damien Hirst, Mike Nelson and Laure Prouvost amongst many others.

Selected artists for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2015 are: Sïan Astley, Kevin Boyd, Lydia Brockless, U. Kanad Chakrabarti, James William Collins, Andrei Costache, Julia Curtin, Abri de Swardt, Melanie Eckersley, Jamie Fitzpatrick, Justin Fitzpatrick, Hannah Ford, Sophie Giller, Richard Hards, Juntae T.J. Hwang, Jasmine Johnson, Tomomi Koseki, Hilde Krohn Huse, Pandora Lavender, Jin Han Lee, Hugo López Ayuso, Beatrice-Lily Lorigan, Scott Lyman, Hanqing Ma & Mona Yoo, Scott Mason, Oliver McConnie, Mandy Niewöhner, Hamish Pearch, Neal Rock, Conor Rogers, Katie Schwab, Tim Simmons, David Cyrus Smith, Francisco Sousa Lobo, Aaron Wells, Morgan Wills and Andrea Zucchini.

Since 1949 New Contemporaries’ annual national touring exhibition has provided a significant critical platform, offering crucial opportunities for the development and recognition of the most interesting emerging artists from UK art schools today. Bloomberg Philanthropies has supported the New Contemporaries touring exhibition since 2000.

This year’s Bloomberg New Contemporaries brings together artists working across a range of media, with materiality, form and the process of making key to the selected works. The exhibition includes painting that draws from the medium’s rich history—from the sombre colour palette and compositions of Velázquez, to the colour field paintings of Helen Frankenthaler; while the influence of Philip Guston’s surreal figuration permeates across a variety of media.

In this year’s selected sculptural work, abject materials such as car parts, plaster, wax, expanding foam and plywood, along with craft methods of production such as crochet and embroidery, are used to question the value of labour and social hierarchies. In other works, a process of manipulation and transformation occur, leading to a slippage in our reading and tactile understanding of materials. Scale plays an important role in the exhibition, with works ranging from the micro to the macro. In addition to large scaled-up clothing and an immersive sound work, presented on a more intimate level are paintings on a range of small-scale prosaic items including a beer mat and crisp packet, as well as a series of tiny etchings depicting fantastical imagery.

The legacy of conceptual art practices infuses the selected work, revealing layers of narrative in both the finished work and through the process of making. These bring together a multitude of people and characters from across time, locations and background. This year, still and moving image works explore and challenge the expectations and perceptions of gender and socioeconomic circumstance. With Bloomberg’s support, however, this year’s participants also benefit from access to a number of professional development opportunities intended to make their practice more sustainable in the long term. These include one-to-one and peer mentoring delivered in partnership with Artquest; a national network of studio bursaries; the shaping of elements of the public programme at ICA; and access to other partner projects, such as Stop Play Record and The Syllabus.

“From concept and critical framework to production, this year’s resulting open submission exhibition is of exceptionally high quality. Providing a professional platform for emerging artists’ work to be seen and discussed, often for the first time outside art school, this year’s exhibition offers a unique nationwide insight into British art schools today, demonstrating the continuing strength of work emerging across the UK.”
–Kirsty Ogg, Director, Bloomberg New Contemporaries

New Contemporaries is a National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) and registered charity.