New Contemporaries: cigarettes, scrotums and surreal beasts
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Buzz! A helmeted figure, wearing a distinctive cuboid rucksack, taps at an entry-phone before an imposing metal gate: a courier with a takeaway inside their turquoise bag. Time to eat.
This is the subject of Delivery (2022), an oil painting by Scottish-born Thomas Cameron, one of 55 “emerging” artists selected for New Contemporaries, the annual, open-submission showcase that arrives at Camden Art Centre in London, having appeared, last autumn, at Blackpool’s Grundy Art Gallery.
Somehow, Cameron imbues a mundane occurrence with the significance of sacred art. That forbidding barrier may not look like the pearly gates, but his title promises spiritual salvation – or an annunciation. Is that a Deliveroo rider – or an emissary from above?
Either way, Cameron’s composition has caught the attention of the Government Art Collection, which has already acquired it, along with Cai Arfon Bellis’s Mirror Arch (2022), a frenetic, charcoal depiction of a jam-packed rave, like a dust-up in a comic-book, or a Vorticist vision of a battle – with a central dancer in a bucket hat like a soldier in a helmet.
Almost everything else is still available, mostly priced in the low thousands of pounds. Alumni of New Contemporaries, which has been going since 1949, include Frank Auerbach, David Hockney, Paula Rego – and recent Turner Prize nominee Heather Phillipson (one of three artist-selectors responsible for winnowing this year’s submissions from 1,900 recent graduates). Here, croon the organisers, is your chance to snap up something by tomorrow’s stars today.
Speculation, though, isn’t the point of New Contemporaries, which is, rather, about encouraging fledgling talent, and providing, as Phillipson puts it, “a glimpse into the minds of the next generation”. What, then, can we see?
Broadly, there are two camps: those, like Cameron, who interrogate modern life, and others who flee from it, into fantastical worlds of their own devising. Nike high-tops, streetwear, and football strips; dance moves popular on TikTok; a snapshot of a locked-down Beijing apartment, like a sweatshop captured by Jeff Wall: all are present.
Yet, so are surreal creatures, like imaginary beasts frolicking in medieval marginalia, as well as a choir of Hungarian women wearing traditional rural dress, and an eerie installation of homespun Polish dolls, all hanging by the neck. Ancient pagan rituals are in the air. As I passed a sinister lupine puppet slumped against a wall, one of its eyeballs dropped onto the floor: accident – or omen? Four tiny, tender sculptures, carved from chalk by Sarah Cleary, could be finds from a Neolithic settlement.
Does this escape-from-reality tendency – which we might term “Ruritanian noir” – reflect disillusionment – or the impact of The Milk of Dreams, Cecilia Alemani’s acclaimed exhibition at the last Venice Biennale, which championed neo-surrealism by women? Probably both.
Other influences – sometimes stifling originality – are easy to spot. Next year’s applicants: stop hanging photographs from bulldog clips, a la Wolfgang Tillmans – it’s a cliché. Helen Clarke’s Propagation (2020), a wall-mounted arrangement of translucent plastic trays, is elegant, albeit reminiscent of work by Do Ho Suh and Rachel Whiteread.
Figures in a Room (2022), a prominent picture by James Dearlove, is haunted by several painters, from Francis Bacon to Michael Armitage. All cigarettes and scrotums, it depicts what looks like the aftermath of an all-male orgy; queer identity is one of the show’s big themes.
The exhibition’s paintings, despite the medium’s recent renaissance, are often the least remarkable thing about it. Helen Cammock, another artist on the panel, laments the lack, this year, of anything in ceramic or glass. Yet, for anyone interested in contemporary art, this New Contemporaries should feel mostly invigorating and assured.
From Jan 19 until April 14; camdenartcentre.org
