"Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2001"
2001-06-22 until 2001-08-19
Camden Arts Centre
London, , UK

New Contemporaries is an annual exhibition of work by students and recent graduates from the UK's art colleges, offering an important platform for emerging artists' work to be seen and discussed. By launching Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2001, Camden Arts Centre continues its commitment to supporting artists during the early stages of their careers. This is the fifth time that the Centre has hosted the show in recent years.

New Contemporaries is shaped by a process of selection from slides, videos, CD-Roms, photographs and audio-tapes through to a shortlist of actual works. This year’s selectors, sculptor Mike Nelson, critic and writer Jennifer Higgie and painter Chris Ofili have selected work by 27 artists from over 1200 applications. The works, selected for their individualism and vitality, cover a broad spectrum and present a cross-section of emerging talent. The selection embraces and challenges different media formats; there is a particularly strong representation of video, film, sound and digital technologies, although painting, sculpture, installation and photography are also included.

Sources of inspiration range from the domestic and personal to aspects of popular culture or new media. Eve Blackwood’s touching video features the voice of an elderly man reciting a poem about loss, while James Coupe’s complex installation wages ‘digital warfare’ in the gallery, engaging the Centre’s communication network and visitors’ mobile phones to activate a virtual space.

Painting is well represented. Jack Duplock’s delicate and magical watercolours contrast with Laura Green’s brightly-coloured paintings of football stadiums. Matthew Brotherhood’s work plays on Modernist ideas of the limit of materials - poured layers of paint stretch and distort the canvas creating almost sculptural objects. Digital works range from Aura Satz’s frightening performance video of a woman dancing feverishly which echoes another era, to Eline McGeorge’s beautifully controlled animation on computer screens made using sophisticated digital technology. Installation-based works include On-Yee Lo’s dramatic video projection of a martial arts fight with choreographed subtitles. Daniel Silver constructs a sculptural environment with fragments and objects suggesting a self-portrait.

The selected artists are Jennifer Allen, Tolia Astakhishvili, Eve Blackwood, Matthew Brotherhood, Varda Caivano, James Coupe, Ryan Doolan, Jack Duplock, Bernhard Frankel, Laura Green, Sophie von Hellermann, Lizzie Hughes, James Hutchinson, Ruth Iliffe, Francis Lamb, On-Yee Lo, Lee Mackinnon, Eline McGeorge, Harold Offeh, Matias Ring, Aura Satz, Andro Semeiko, Conrad Shawcross, Daniel Silver, Twenteenth Century, Jessica Warboys, and Michelle Williams.

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