New Contemporaries is an annual exhibition selected from the work of students and graduates of fine art degree courses in the UK. Hosted by the Cornerhouse for the sixth year running, the 33 successful artists have been chosen by Sarah Kent, visual arts editor of London magazine Time Out, Jeremy Millar, a freelance curator, and artist Gavin Turk. Damien Hirst, a previous New Comtemporaries exhibitor, is one of the project's patrons.
Much of the work here seems to harbour a fascination with urban-pastoral landscapes or concepts. Can we take the city to the country and vice versa? Josephine Butler's huge atmospheric photographs of peaty groves could depict October days in any rural area, but she tells us in the title that they are all somewhere in the City of London. With the industrial detritus of bricks, hose-pipes, buckets and glass, James Ireland sets up Tableau, a DIY waterfall, cheekily based on an accompanying photograph of the real thing.
Beata Veszley, meanwhile, brings animals to the city by constructing five life-size plastic horse-heads replete with manes and glass eyes. She mounts these on wooden poles and the viewer is encouraged to step inside the cast and wear one like a mask. If you're with a friend, equine conversations are welcomed.
Of the video installations, Nikolaj Larsen's Love is a fuzzy-pictured shot of a couple kissing in the rain, with a maniac occasionally shouting "I love you" in the background. It is at once intimate and horrible. Also intriguing is Vali and Ameneh by Johannes Maier, a chat between two bilingual Iranian speakers, and you have to listen carefully to hear them slip between the colloquialisms of the two languages. If the video work seems to wisely eschew political content, then this is counteracted by Phil Collins's How to Make a Refugee, a two-screen documentary showing a lifestyle magazine photographing refugees. In a rather obvious indictment of the media, Collins clearly reveals the humiliation of the young boy being photographed.
Of course, there is much playfulness on show too. Edward Weldon's small but chunky oil paintings of envelopes, cash tills, and skips are grubby delights, while Cable Car by an artist known simply as Eric is a life-size model in wood. Jennifer Beattie's sculpture, Beautiful Tree, is made of varnished branches which look like barbecued ribs and boast Sellotape clusters for blossom. It might sound like a Blue Peter special, but it's rather stunning. Also striking are Marta Marce's post-Hirst canvases of bold lines and spirals.
