ART-PRESENTATION: Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2019
Since 1949 Bloomberg New Contemporaries has consistently supported contemporary visual artists to successfully transition from education into professional practice, primarily by means of an annual, UK touring exhibition. Bloomberg New Contemporaries continues to be unique in the level of support that offers emerging artists through an open call and associated programmes.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Bloomberg New Contemporaries Archive
The “Bloomberg New Contemporaries” at to the South London Gallery with an exhibition of works by 45 emerging artists presented across both the Main Gallery and Fire Station. This exhibition marks the 70th anniversary of New Contemporaries and the 20th year of Bloomberg Philanthropies support of the annual touring exhibition. Works across sculpture, painting, performance, film, sound and photography address current discussions: from autobiography to global politics, material process to humour, community and class. An accompanying programme of performances, film screenings, workshops and symposia explores the creative and practical concerns of emergent artists, including peer mentoring and writing as practice. Among the artist of the exhibition, Jan Agha explores the impulses of self and the cultural barriers built around her without using any native cultural references. Instead, the artist uses the impulses that are provoked from coming from a different background into a contemporary society, and aim to make religious and cultural iconography of her own. Eleonora Agostin’s practice encompasses photography, performance and sculpture and is driven by her interest in the reconsideration and redefinition of the everyday. Through the study of preconceived structures, whether physical or psychological, she aims to investigate the difficulties of how human experience is constructed. Whether it is through the fabrication of scenarios for the camera or the documentation of conventional activities, she is interested in finding a possible fracture within our socially constructed rules and the spaces we inhabit. Justin Apperley is a visual designer, photographer and printmaker whose work is a whimsical, behind-the-scenes look at everyday life on the road and off the beaten track. Justin was born and raised in the prairies and now currently lives in Dawson City, Yukon. Liam Ashley Clark works largely in painting, drawing and photography, as well as in collage, 3D and more. He also produces large scale murals, works as an illustrator and is a prolific zine maker. His work takes influence from the D.I.Y. cultures and creators of skateboarding, punk, hip-hop and folk scenes and is inspired by a wide spectrum of interests including; politics, society, psychology, current events, youth culture and more. Becca May Collins explores the development of sentimentality towards a site, or a “sense of place”. Working with specific sites over a prolonged amount of time, she researches the intangible through walking, talking and just plain ‘being’. Becca May Collins uses the process of drawing on-location to search and question before working in the studio to re-construct scenes from memory. For Samuel Fordham painting operates as a hermetic portal between an instinctive inner and outer reality as if operating as a pineal body. The act of making a painting is important, one decision leads to another as the work becomes realised by applying paint directly wet into wet. I draw out the subject using whats at hand, brushes, charcoal, rags and fingers twisting and turning the paintings until images reveal a cliff edge or a space containing bathos and absurdity something both divine and decrepit. I invent painted narratives involving corporeal figures occupying preternatural landscapes and stage sets. They are falling or about to fall apart often in a state of transformation, reverie or catatonic breakdown referencing holy men or hermits drawn from northern european medieval painting. Roei Greenberg’s work is in constant search for intersections between geography, history and biography. Using large format camera and film, His work invites a forensic reading and create a multi layered photographic perspective; pictorial and luring, yet tinged with underlying ideological tones, inviting a critical reading of the territory he choose to portray.
Selected artists for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2019 are: Jan Agha, Eleonora Agostini, Justin Apperley, Ismay Bright, Roland Carline, Liam Ashley Clark, Becca May Collins, Rafael Pérez Evans, Katharina Fitz, Samuel Fordham, Chris Gilvan-Cartwright, Gabriela Giroletti, Roei Greenberg, Elena Helfrecht, Mary Herbert, Laura Hindmarsh, Cyrus Hung, Yulia Iosilzon, Umi Ishihara, Alexei Alexander Izmaylov, Paul Jex, Eliot Lord, Annie Mackinnon, Renie Masters, Simone Mudde, Isobel Napier, Louis Blue Newby, Louiza Ntourou, Ryan Orme, Marijn Ottenhof, Jonas Pequeno, Emma Prempeh, Zoe Radford, Taylor Jack Smith, George Stamenov, Emily Stollery, Wilma Stone, Jack Sutherland, Xiuching Tsay, Alaena Turner, Klara Vith, Ben Walker, Ben Yau, Camille Yvert and Stefania Zocco.
Info: South London Gallery, 65-67 Peckham Rd, London & South London Gallery Fire Station, 82 Peckham Road, London, Duration: 6/12/19-6/2/20, Days & Hours: Tue & Thu-Sun 11:00-18:00, Wed 11:00-21:00, www.southlondongallery.org
