New Contemporaries

Now in its second year, the RSA’s graduate show learns fast. While 2009 marked a dramatic change of pace from the previous everyone’s-a-winner student show, 2010 has improved still further on the new formula, presenting a selection of works from emergent artists that display confidence, conceptual sophistication and a finely honed skill for making.

Some of the displays are familiar, rearranged versions of last year’s degree show. Some, however, include new developments, or even all new works and installations, a notable achievement so soon after graduation. Jessica Ramm, who was singled out for mention on these very pages way back in June's Showcase last year, has spent the months since graduating refining her Jean Tinguely-influenced kinetic sculptures, creating a whole new collection of works that glow and flutter, industrial materials and shapes transformed into magical moving creatures through the gift of wires and pistons and just a little bit of sorcery. Tall thin metal rods are topped with lightbulbs and backed by wings which move at random intervals. Half-wheels are transformed into tail feathers on slender birds which peck at rocks, linked together by near-invisible wires. Such a development, and such complex new work, suggests that Ramm is shaping up to be a career artist, not just an art graduate.

Omar Zingaro Bhatia’s installation is a re-presentation of his Spuriosity Shop, an archive-junkshop of paintings and artefacts, fragments of a family history and the ephemera of identity. The loaded objects (amongst many others: painted portraits; photographs of forebears of various ethnicities; a teddy bear; some hats; a shisha pipe; antlers; a stuffed magpie) present clues to a persona deliberately conceived and presented by the artist, and a history imbued with mythology. The viewer flits between objects, gleaning an idea of a self consciously exotic identity formed through a childhood in Tanzania, a schooling in Scotland, a term in Transylvania. The artist himself is fond of hanging about in his exhibit, treating visitors to the performance of a showman strumming his guitar, sitting in his leather armchair, or regaling with tales of his own history. The installation is absorbing, the tale contained within engaging, intriguing, playfully told, and ultimately elusive. The Skinny enjoyed it so much we gave him a prize.

Harriet Lowther’s Big Thank You Project continues to count the artist’s blessings in consumable goods. Lowther has taken the time to write thank you letters to the people whose goods and services keep her happy on a daily basis. She writes to companies too numerous to list (V05, Silverspoon Sugar, Primark, Domestos amongst other examples), itemising the hundreds of moments of pleasure or satisfaction which occur in the daily lives of the consumer society, moments that normally go unremarked, unnoticed in the relentless pursuit of acquisition. Lowther wants us to think about what we have, and take a moment to reflect on how much there is to be grateful for. The letters are framed and hung on the wall, rows upon rows of gratitude, while on the other side hang the responses she received from the organisations themselves, grateful for a bit of human contact for a change. The project is finely balanced, on a knife edge between warm gratitude and cool irony, an ambiguity that makes it all the more engaging.

For anyone who hasn’t seen Rachel MacLean’s work – even though we’ve been barking on about it for over a year now – her contribution includes a set of four films made over the last year and a half, from the Sex-And-The-City-meets-a-Royal-Mile-Scottish-shop madness of Tae Think Again, to Going Bananas’ meditation (with added neon and singing) on the banana’s place in visual culture. Her work engages with the contemporary world of sensory overload, disposable materials and complex levels of cultural reference. She makes the videos alone in her room, the means of production aping the increasingly solitary pursuits of the virtual world at large. The visual imagery is produced from a multitude of sources, from fried egg boobs to The Sound Of Music, from Celts and Picts to Beauty And The Beast. A truly unique experience.

Other displays of note include Jonathan Richards, whose three dimensional paintings (or paint sculptures?) are made from multiple layers of white paint, left to dry and manipulated to form ripples and creases, somewhat like a three dimensional version of an Alison Watt painting, but more interesting. Laura Moss displays a nice use of kitchen materials, with forms made up of household ephemera – videotapes, plates, cans, family photos – wrapped in multiple layers of cling film, creating the impression of strange alien gestation pods lying on the gallery floor. And of course Jamie Fitzpatrick, April's cover star, presents his taxidermied wares, a squirrel with an apparently mummified human hand stuck to its back proving particularly striking in a display intended to provide food for thought on the subject of genetic modification.

Overall, there are many unique experiences to be had as this year’s RSA New Contemporaries. The exhibition presents a snapshot of a new generation of artists, many of whom are making very sophisticated work capable of melding concept with visual flair and an element of humour, without losing the thread of meaning.