New Contemporaries @ ICA
Viewing New Contemporaries is a bit like attending a touring production of a West End show. The filler roles quietly hide in the shadows of a few talented leads, while the bulk of the company is comprised of hard-working artists honing their craft as they search for that special spark needed to leapfrog them ahead of the pack. This year the exhibition returns to the ICA, a smaller venue that limits the roster to 35 emerging and early-career artists. There’s no singular overriding theme but the curators have ensured the selections span a wide range of perspective and practice, so navigating the rooms is exactly what you want a show like this to be: sometimes jarring, a little bit exciting and dripping with potential.
Upon entering the lower gallery a few things immediately vie for my attention. Do I stop to grab one of Mya Cavner and Edith Liben’s paper ballet dancers or check to see if Beverley Duckworth’s seedlings are actually real? Wait… are those flapping minnows I hear really real fish? Tom Fairlamb’s ‘The Current Current of Current’ drags me all the way across the room before I realise I‘d just carefully meandered through Valentino Vannini’s unsubtle garden of phalluses made of concrete and vaseline. Filled with bold, confident works, Gallery 1 is a strong statement of intent from artists that have all found captivating ways to draw your focus and make you curious to understand their concerns. Even Anna Howard’s cardboard boxes patterned with packing tape, which most people seemed to view as an annoyance to be navigated around, stood out as a uniquely distinct voice.
However, it was Libby Bove’s series of black & white photos juxtaposing rustic folk wearing animal skulls at their local M.O.T. vehicle safety test centres that jabbed me squarely between the funny bone and nervous disposition. Accompanied by a 90-second musical clip that imagined what these individuals’ ritual song & dance might sound like, the experience was a rare treat that transported me inside the mind of the artist while still leaving plenty of room for my own interpretation. I listened to it three times, whereas I didn’t even pick up the headphones after seeing the wall text for Millie Shafiee’s audio selection. No one goes to an art show to listen to a one-hour narrative.
Speaking of other works you’ll probably skip, they’re helpfully clustered together in Room 2. Joshua Whitaker’s chain smoking Muppet was the only video that looked even remotely interesting but I wish I had let that image be my lasting memory because I almost fell asleep after 90 seconds in the headset. The other three videos were documentary style with overly laboured narration, a reminder that I’m still patiently waiting for the day when curators stop mistaking boring filmmaking as important art.
Welcoming you to the galleries upstairs is a work you might miss, but Motunrayo Akinola’s ‘Grandma’s (gl)ceiling’ got both my attention and respect. Is it a reproduction or an actual extraction? Is his grandma still alive? What does it even mean? By the end of my visit I’d walked underneath it at least half a dozen times as I crossed between the galleries without ever looking up at it again. People so rarely look up, but I was constantly aware that it was there, like a caring elder relative that wants you to bloom but still patiently longs for your call.
That work sits between Rooms 4 and 5, where potential and reality collide with awkward abandon. Roo Dhissou’s socially engaged practice entails craft, cooking and performance that I can only assume provides a powerful emotional experience for live participants. Unfortunately, the installation shown here is a static table of ceramics covered with the kinds of simplistic platitudes more commonly found on greeting cards. Laura Kazaroff’s ‘gaslighting device’ was another work similarly let down by naive lack of subtlety.
Those works and many others provided helpful reminders that I was viewing artists at the beginning of their journeys, when ideas often eclipse ability to execute. Sun Oh’s ‘Dinner with Family’ presents a powerful visual metaphor that struggled to justify the 6:47 min video runtime. It was hard to fully appreciate Fi Isodore’s woodworking because some of the details wouldn’t pass muster with a junior carpenter. Karen David’s decorative book covers have just as many empty calories as the fancy cakes they replicate, and AC Larsen’s Adidas Originals tracksuit chair straddles the fine line between clever and too clever for it’s own good.
As regards the few paintings on display, it’s all too easy to think they’re trying too hard but the selections make sense compared to the large and often imposing sculptural installations they’re competing with for your attention. Max Boyla’s giant oil on silk abstracts, Georgia Dymock’s comically grotesque ‘Roadkill’ and Varshga Premarasa’s surreal narratives all present imagery that justifies further exploration into their practice. But it’s Síomha Harrington’s ‘People are People and a Fool is a Fool’ that alarms me with discomfort. A naked young woman tightly grips the arm of an aloof, off-screen male figure. It appears to be a depiction of the night before the morning after a #MeToo moment, and fills me with the same kind of male shame that I get when I read the news.
I’ve only covered two-thirds of the show and have now run out of space, but rest assured that almost everything deserves inclusion. Well, maybe not those Room 2 videos. They could learn a lot from Saul Pankhurst’s tightly edited, amusing and astute 3:14 min commentary on modern society’s ongoing clash between mindfulness, technical “progress” and unmitigated consumption. It inspired me to take away a copy of Molly Burrows’ ‘Publication for Young Visitors’ to read during my leisurely ride home. Described as a guide for the exhibition aimed at 11-15 year olds, it’s so friendly and informative and filled with helpful recommendations that it needn’t be kept from the adults. I wish all gallery and museum texts were like this.
Plan your visit
‘New Contemporaries’ runs from 15 January - 25 March, 2025
Visit ica.art and follow @icalondon on Instagram for more info about the venue.
Visit newcontemporaries.org.uk and follow @newcontemps on Instagram for more info about the artists and the org.
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