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Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2019 opens at South London Gallery next week, on 6 December 2019. Celebrating the breadth of art practice emerging from the UK’s exceptional art schools and alternative education programmes, the exhibition provides an intriguing opportunity to see the next generation of contemporary artists who encapsulate the cultural zeitgeist. The guest selectors for the 2019 exhibition are renowned artists Rana Begum, Sonia Boyce and Ben Rivers. Begum tells: “It’s so important for the enrichment of the arts and the UK’s cultural legacy that a new generation of artists have a platform to present their work to wider audiences, and give them an opportunity to develop a voice.”

Xiuching Tsay, Drunken Gravity, 2018 (Courtesy the artist and Bloomberg New Contemporaries)

New Contemporaries celebrates its 70th anniversary this year and has frequently played a key role in bringing incredible artists to public attention, such as Frank Auerbach, David Hockney, Derek Jarman, Damien Hirst, Gillian Wearing, Tacita Dean, Mark Lecky, Mona Hatoum, Mike Nelson, Chris Ofili and many more. This year’s exhibition will feature 45 of the UK’s most exciting artists emerging from arts education in 2019. Themes addressed by artists in the exhibition include: global and personal politics, exemplified by Roei Greenberg’s photographs made along the Israeli/Syrian border, George Stamenov’s re-imagining of post-Soviet era Bulgaria; and gender and sexual politics, highlighted in Louis Blue Newby’s remake of David Cronenberg’s 1996 psycho-sexual thriller Crash, alongside Taylor Jack Smith’s exploration of male identity.

Camille Yvert, Permanent Transit, 2018 (Courtesy the artist and Bloomberg New Contemporaries)

Guest selector, Rivers says: “Personally I agreed to do the selecting, because I was excited to see what is coming out of art schools now – and I have enjoyed seeing New Contemporaries in the past for the same reason. Of course it is only a segment, not everyone applies, and it’s three people’s decisions each year, which could be wildly different from that of three other selectors, but it gives you a taste of what is happening in art schools around the country. I think it’s an important decision not telling us, the selectors, anything about the artists – their name, age, what school they went to, nothing – so you’re just concentrating on the work. And now I’m really looking forward to the show, seeing all the work properly installed, I think it’s going to be really exciting.”

Louis Blue Newby, somewhere crashing, 2018 (Courtesy the artist and Bloomberg New Contemporaries)

The complete list of selected artists for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2019 are: Jan Agha, Eleonora Agostini, Justin Apperley, Ismay Bright, Roland Carline, Liam Ashley Clark, Becca May Collins, Rafael Pérez Evans, Katharina Fitz, Samuel Fordham, Chris Gilvan-Cartwright, Gabriela Giroletti, Roei Greenberg, Elena Helfrecht, Mary Herbert, Laura Hindmarsh, Cyrus Hung, Yulia Iosilzon, Umi Ishihara, Alexei Alexander Izmaylov, Paul Jex, Eliot Lord, Annie Mackinnon, Renie Masters, Simone Mudde, Isobel Napier, Louis Blue Newby, Louiza Ntourou, Ryan Orme, Marijn Ottenhof, Jonas Pequeno, Emma Prempeh, Zoe Radford, Taylor Jack Smith, George Stamenov, Emily Stollery, Wilma Stone, Jack Sutherland, Xiuching Tsay, Alaena Turner, Klara Vith, Ben Walker, Ben Yau, Camille Yvert and Stefania Zocco.



Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2019 at South London Gallery (6 December 2019 – 23 February 2020)



Feature image: Alexei Alexander Izmaylov, Lupe sul Naso (Bee on the Nose), 2018 (Courtesy the artist and Bloomberg New Contemporaries)

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