Magazine


Focussing on antidote art

by Conrad Astley
2/ 6/2005

BLOOMBERG New Contemporaries 2005, displaying work that has come from Britain's art colleges, opens at The Cornerhouse.

The exhibition features installations, videos, paintings, and sculptures made by some of the UK's most talented art students or recent graduates.

And the show, which launches in Manchester before moving on to Bristol and London, is so highly regarded among new artists that judges had to work their way through 1,100 submissions.

It started in 1949, and was associated with the British pop art movement during the 50s, helping launch David Hockney's career.

The exhibition disappeared for several years before being relaunched in 1988, featuring the work of Damian Hirst.

Organiser Bev Bytheway said many pieces being exhibited this year were highly political and unsettling works.

These included Stuart McCaffer's installation Harry Takes A Holiday a prison cell which the audience can walk into, based on descriptions from his father's time inside. The exhibition also includes Manchester Metropolitan University graduate Charlotte Rea's photographs of emergency accommodation for the city's asylum seekers, and Beltran Obregon's slide show of a Colombian prison seen from the air - taken after he attached a digital camera to helium balloons.

However, Bev added that although the exhibition was an attempt to find some of the most interesting new work being made, it was not about "star spotting".

Or as Jeremy Akerman, one of the judges, said in his catalogue for the exhibition: "This isn't another makeover show where a person suddenly gets to play artist.

"Nor is it about the greatest art hits of 2005. Society's obsession with listing and scoring our top 100 betrays a curious insecurity about the present day.

"This exhibition is an alternative, an antidote, a good show by people who have decided to see, hear and feel more.

"I hope they go on doing so for a long time."

Bloomberg New Contemporaries at the Cornerhouse runs from June 4


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