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LOT is very proud to be hosting Bloomberg New Contemporaries in Bristol in conjunction with Spike Island.
The aspirations of Bloomberg New Contemporaries and LOT are the same. We both want to showcase the work of young emerging artists to a broader audience.
Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2005 is an annual showcase featuring work by students and recent graduates from British Art Schools. The exhibition provides a much-needed professional opportunity for young and emerging artists to gain wider recognition and visibility and offers a glimpse into the work of tomorrow's artists today.
New Contemporaries is open to all final year undergraduates, current postgraduates and artists who have graduated in the previous 12 months. Artists Jeremy Akerman, Phil Collins and Jane and Louise Wilson, who all premiered in New Contemporaries themselves, have selected works by 29 artists from 1,100 submissions.
While it is dangerous to generalise and characterise, it is probably fair to suggest that Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2005 has a subtle political air about it. Using a sometimes-unusual approach to representation this fantastic range of work is reflective of travels through the world as well the interiors of institutions throughout the world.
The snatched photographs by Beltran Obregon of Colombian prison courtyards taken by a remote-controlled digital camera attached to balloons that imperceptibly sail quietly overhead, balances a meandering sense of aim with rare topographical overview. An accomplished full, frank and frontal 'near' documentary by Mark Boulos featuring a woman in the Christian community of Damascus who claims to have been visited by the Virgin Mary is powerful and queasy. Nelson Crespo has made a set or series of touchingly formal prints in traditional media that are simple, spare, and affectively close to their original point and source.
There is a good range of work, including a substantial amount of adamantly physical sculpture. Papier-mâché, that medium of utter economy and varying levels of fashionability, makes a powerful comeback with the work of Jenny Dunseath who moves from reference to furniture with legs to the very simple twist of total non-representational form. The cross between a screen and freestanding folly by Robert Orchardson cuts an optical illusion through the space of the gallery.
Richard Mosse's photographs of the outline of the outside landscape, framed by a ruined building, is complemented by the collapsed building elsewhere in Bam. The contemporary play between mediation, artwork, and the impossibility of giving a straight documentary account is here, also, with a series of photographs of the interiors of houses belonging to prosperous Gypsies in Lodz, Poland, by Payam Sharifi.
The interior of a real prison cell recreated from the transcription of the prisoner inside makes for a separate and obviously claustrophobic relationship to time in Harry Takes a Holiday by Stuart McCaffer, while paintings which construct a sort of mock logic, with a 1960's touch and execution make for another kind of place and reason.
First established in 1949, New Contemporaries has a legacy of unearthing fresh talent and offers a show of vitality and variety with a unique insight into the energies, ideas, potential and promise of the next generation of artists.
The exhibition is being held across two sites in Bristol, at LOT and at Spike Island