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There is no better way to usher in the new year than New Contemporaries. The annual group show brings together the best recent art grads in the country and whacks them in an art institution, all at a time of year when most galleries are still stumbling bleary eyed out of their Christmas slumbers.
This year, it’s taking place at the venerable old ICA, and it’s great; full of fun, funny, joyful, surreal, silly, it’s a genuinely enjoyable crop of young artists. The lack of painting compared to previous years is notable, as is the slight overabundance of video, but the themes are enjoyably Gen Z; plenty of ideas around identity, migration, fantasy, mental health and gender. The kids, they’re alright, and their art’s not bad either.
🎨 The 9 best art exhibitions to see in London this January.
Eight artists we loved at New Contemporaries 2024
Molly Burrows, ‘Publication for Young Visitors’
One of my favourite things in the show is this brilliant little zine by Molly Burrows which acts as a guide to some of the art and artists in the exhibition. It’s totally accessible, totally intelligible, totally approachable – the opposite to every other gallery guide ever, including the ICA’s own bollocks-saturated one for this show – and makes the rest of the show even more enjoyable.
Siomha Harrington, ‘People are People and a Fool is a Fool’
There’s not a lot of painting this year, but the painting they have included is damn good, like this ghostly, sickly, vulnerable, haunting work by Siomha Harrington which manages to be both unsettling and quite beautiful.
Karen David, ‘Arcadia (Season 6, Episode 15)’
Paintings have never been as lickable as Karen David’s globby, sculptural, cakey blobs piped onto book covers. Delicious.
Motunrayo Akinola, ‘Grandma’s (gl)ceiling’
This vast chunk of minimal abstraction, made of flattened sheets of torn cardboard and ripped wallpaper and suspended above you as you enter the gallery, feels like a portrait, filled with references to domestic spaces and family relations.
Laura Kazaroff, ‘gaslighting device’
A gently hissing pastel-coloured machine spits comforting aphorisms in this sly takedown of the commodification of mental health.
Libby Bove, ‘So turns the wheel of the M.O.T.’
Imagine if getting your M.O.T. was a historic folk ritual, a custom passed down through the generations, a rite for movement and transport. Well imagine no more, because Libby Bobe’s funny, clever, fun photographs have made it real; pagan ceremonies for ULEZ exemption.
Tom Fairlamb, ‘The Current Current of Current’
Like a lot of the work here, Tom Fairlamb’s shoal of flopping, flapping mechanised minnows manages to be faintly ridiculous, loads of fun and a little strange.
Elliot Roy, ‘A Content replaces Another’
Part-performance art, part-social media content, Elliot Roy films himself jogging, riding Lime bikes, talking to camera, chatting about art, war, music. It’s literally TikTok videos as art, and it doesn’t get more Gen Z than that.
New Contemporaries is at the ICA, Jan 15-Mar 23. More details here.
Want more art? Here are the top 10 exhibitions in London.
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