15 RCA artists selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2023

Date

20 July 2023

Author

School, Centre or Area

Read time

3 minutes

Bloomberg New Contemporaries is an annual event celebrating and supporting the next generation of artists and the long-term sustainability of emerging practices. Of this year’s 55 selected artists, 15 are students, staff or alumni of the RCA.

Date

20 July 2023

Author

School, Centre or Area

Read time

3 minutes

The selected artists’ work will be exhibited at Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool from 30 September to 16 December 2023. The show will then travel to Camden Art Centre from 19 January to 31 March 2024. Their work will also be showcased through a digital platform and participants will have access to a range of opportunities including mentoring, talks, and workshops through New Contemporaries bespoke Bridget Riley Artists' Development Programme.

Each year the selection panel comprises influential art world figures including curators, writers and artists. The 2023 selectors included MA Photography alumni Sunil Gupta and Helen Cammock, as well as Heather Phillipson.

The selection includes current students and recent graduates from a range of disciplines.

Osman Yousefzada working on tapestry in studio

Osman Yousefzada in the studio

Osman Yousefzada (PhD Arts & Humanities) is an interdisciplinary artist whose PhD is concerned with reimagining immigrant spaces. The tapestry he is showing for Bloomberg New Contemporaries is 'part of a series of works, around Talismans and Guardians. Guardians of working class immigrants - of the New Life for those who migrate for safety or for a better life. The images are inspired by the Falnama from the 16th Century A book of Ghouls and Jinns, used to tell the future.'

GOAL by Noa Klagsbald

Noa Klagsbald (MA Photography, 2022) uses staged photography in GOAL, some of which recreate historical masterpieces, to explore relationships between different groups in her home country of Israel. As she explains 'the photographs deviate from traditional sport photography and from its capturing of action, and instead aesthetically frames the players in uncharacteristic, at times feminine, positions.'

Lili Murphy-Johnson in the workshop

Lili Murphy-Johnson (MA Jewellery & Metal) is showing a video documentation piece. She told us that the MA Jewellery & Metal has helped her 'push the boundaries of the jewellery subject. It has taught me to have a broader perspective when trying to understand things and to be persistently curious when following my ideas through. I have really loved the way MA encourages experimental and risk taking approaches to making and thinking.'

Still of landscape with character, text reads: 'Far awa'

Zipped Up Blues by Matthew Burdis

Matthew Burdis (MA Contemporary Art Practice, 2023) bases his video piece on his family history. He told us 'In Zipped Up Blues my dad recalls his memories of searching the Northumbrian fells for the wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103 (often referred to as the Lockerbie Bombing,1988). Audio recordings are combined with personal and cartoon imagery connected to that time period of his father’s life.

Ahaad Alamoudi's (MA Print, 2017 and 2020-24 PhD, Fine Art and Humanities) work prompts conversations around historic and contemporary narratives emerging from Saudi Arabia by showcasing the region's cultural and social transformations. The piece Ahaad is showing is called The Green Light, she explained how it works; 'it challenges how ideas can spread and manifest from one mimicked form to another, moving, changing and constantly creating new simulacrums. In the piece when the green light is switched off the messages they hold lay dormant, once the light is on then the messages continue to spread and form a new whole.'

The other selected RCA artists are: