Green shoots.

Guest blogger Natalie Bradbury of The Shrieking Violet goes talent-spotting at Bloomberg New Contemporaries

Since it started back in 1949, New Contemporaries has been a way for young artists to gain national exposure early on in their careers. A travelling exhibition incorporated into Liverpool Biennial every other year, this year’s show starts at Cornerhouse before moving to London later in the year. Picked by a panel of selectors that included Ellen Gallagher, Saskia Olde Wolbers, John Stezaker and Wolfgang Tillmans, the work on show displays, according to the judges, a single theme: it all ‘plays with the role of description, telling things as they are, or inventing things until they look at least real.’

Susanne Green, a Chelsea College of Art and Design graduate, explains that her work captures the ‘glamour and otherworldliness…the desire for ornamentation and escapism’ that characterises modern life. She exhibits what look like enlarged freeze frames of browsers window shopping. Blurry and anonymous, they show the back of people’s heads as if they’ve been caught on CCTV.

The experience of the modern world and how to represent it recurs across the exhibition, and is particularly well explored in the painting, photography and video works. Some of the most striking images are by Andrew Curtis, who recently completed an MA in printmaking at the Royal College of Art and creates scenes of ‘suburban dissonance’ that ‘blur physical and psychological reality’. In New Empire (Shadow Before), a giant, foreign species of plant explodes onto a quiet suburban street, its shadow spreading like cracks in the pavement. The black and white scene is seen through a gauzy layer, like a veil, adding an element of suspicion to the work. It conjures up images of twitching net curtains. Similarly, in New Empire (Araucaria Araucana), a huge, spiky tree is superimposed onto a street scene like a silhouette, taking up almost the whole of the foreground to ridiculous effect. In the background, a Ford Focus, white van, suburban semis and neatly trimmed box hedges are easily recognisable. The invader towers over human life, its arms extended wide and tall, like it has come to colonise the comfortable and familiar.

The exhibitors are overwhelmingly drawn from London institutions, although the artists originate from around the world. Frances Blythe represents Manchester Metropolitan University with thoughtful black and white representations of modern dwellings. Her scenes, framed in small boxes, show from a distance the places where people live out their lives. Her photos of recognisable yet nondescript homes and blocks of flats contain obvious signs of habitation – a lone light on at night, a white van – yet are strangely absent of people. The drawing and painting of Amir Chasson, who has just completed an MA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, also stands out. Crying Upwards is a simple, watery portrait in blue and black that subverts the trajectory of tears. It’s as if the tears are acid eating into the subject’s face as he cries upwards.

One of the most surreal pieces of work is Susanne Ludwig’s Feasibility Fantasies. Ludwig, who studied photography at the Royal College of Art, creates slow motion films of what looks like a cathedral. Removed from its usual environment, and rebuilt as a bouncy castle, its two spires gradually arise from thick trees, floating across mountains attached to a hot air balloon.

New Contemporaries is a dense exhibition, packing a lot of work into the three floors of the Cornerhouse galleries, but it’s worth spending an afternoon watching all the films and taking a close look at the work; past exhibitors have gone on to great things. You never know, you might spot the next big star of the UK art scene.

Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Cornerhouse, until October 25. Free. Natalie Bradbury writes the blog The Shrieking Violet. She has recently launched a monthly spin-off print fanzine of the same name, which aims to function as an alternative guide to Manchester and celebrate overlooked aspects of the city. She also writes for various publications, including Manchester Confidential, City Life, Big Issue in the North and The Mule.

Images (top to bottom): Rachel Maclean, Andrew Curtis

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