5 RCA artists join Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024

The exhibition will then travel to the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, from 15 January to 23 March 2025. As well as being included in the 2024 exhibitions, the artists will have access to mentoring, talks and workshops through New Contemporaries bespoke Bridget Riley Artists' Development Programme.

This year’s two-part selection process was led by artists Liz Johnson Artur, Permindar Kaur and Amalia Pica.

Yang Zou is a moving image artist, who worked as a cultural journalist in China before coming to the RCA. His work is concerned with the misunderstandings between humans and machines as well as the anxieties that arise from societal shifts.

His film I love you, life. I hope it’s great again has been selected for New Contemporaries 2024. “My work is moving image, 23 minutes, colour and sound, which documents my train journey across Russia last year.” The narrative has two dimensions: observations of everyday life in wartime and memories of love, death and power. “Merging reality with fiction, this work explores the premise of how the world operates – misunderstanding.”

Yang thanks his mentor at the RCA – our Head of MA Photography, Professor James Coupe for opening up “more possibilities of expressing [himself]” and for introducing him to new methods including the use of AI.

Authentic and unfiltered moments of family life in Tehran are the subject of Farzaneh Ghadyanloo’s work. At New Contemporaries 2024, she will be showing her photo series Thursdays documenting her family’s weekly gatherings over the past decade.

Before coming to the RCA, Farzaneh studied film in Tehran and made short movies until shifting to the more intimate medium of photography. “Over time, I’ve become invisible to my subjects, allowing me to document reality without interference.”

During her time on our MA Contemporary Art Practice, Farzaneh moved between mediums of photography and sculpture, with her work focusing on women. “My experience at the RCA reignited my passion for my roots and inspired me to revisit my earlier projects with fresh energy.”

The representation of abandoned, post-war cities in the Middle East is the focus of Sara Osman’s work. Sara is a British artist of Turkish Cypriot heritage who graduated from our MA Sculpture in 2023.

Homs in Syria, Shibam in Yemen and the Maraş in Northern Cyprus all feature in her sculptures, which “depict enduring human spirit in the face of adversity and provoke reflection on the profound impacts of war on communities.”

She developed the work she is showing at New Contemporaries 2024, Battle for Home – an ambitious installation and video piece, in the RCA’s studios supported by a scholarship which Sara told us allowed her to “advance [her] practice in terms of materiality, scale and quality.”

Tom Fairlamb makes durational, moving sculptures that blur disciplinary boundaries to playfully approach serious questions about the structures that shape the world around us. At New Contemporaries 2024, he will exhibit The Current Current of Current, an installation of 60 motorised minnows connected to a central timer intermittently switching them on and off. Their mechanisms are left exposed to the viewer as they flap on the floor of the gallery space. “Their collective suffering can act as a warning or a parable”, Tom explains.

“Studying MA Contemporary Art Practice (CAP) has put me in the best position to pursue a career as an artist”, Tom told us. He credits then Head of Programme, Professor Chantal Faust and his personal Tutor, Jordan Baseman, as well as his coursemates in the CAP Studio, with helping him gain confidence in his practice, a deeper understanding of his work and a strong network of friends and colleagues.

Danilo Zocatelli Cesco brings together the political and personal in his project Dear Father which "redefines the bond between father and son through a role reversal, where the father becomes the performer, normalising the son’s queerness."

The series of photos feature his father, a farmer in Brazil, performing everyday tasks in drag. Transforming past misunderstandings into a lived experience of acceptance and change.

“This project, born from my degree show, has truly been a journey of innovation and creativity” Danilo told us. His time at on the MA Photography the RCA has had a huge influence on his practice. And he credits “invaluable critiques and conversations with my tutors, peers and technicians” with enriching his work and leading to a considerable amount of public attention.