Cover Image: Community Dance Showcase (2017) by Roland Carline, one of the artists selected for the 2019 Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition. 

This Autumn , New Contemporaries, one of the leading UK organisations supporting  emerging talent will celebrate its 70th anniversary with the launch of their annual touring exhibition. Set to initially launch on September 14th at the Leeds Art Gallery, the exhibition will feature 45 of UK most interesting artists selected by renowned artists Rana Begum , Sonia Boyce and Ben Rivers. 

Through a rigorous process of selection from the recent batch of graduates from the UK’s finest art schools, the team has put together a roster of creatives to tackle topics such as global and personal politics, class and community and gender and sexuality. Giving each artist the freedom too showcase their perspective on such issues. 

 “It’s so important for the enrichment of the arts and the UK’s cultural legacy that a new generation of artists have a platform to present their work to wider audiences, and give them an opportunity to develop a voice,” said Rana Begum, 2019 selector.

After closing it’s run in Leeds on November 17th the exhibition will then move to the South London Gallery on December 6th where it will remain until February 23rd 2020. 

For more information visit: New Contemporaries.

Tags: Art, gallery, London Exhibition, new contemporaries

Cover Image: Autour de nous huile sur bois de Karine Rougier, 103 x 93 cm, 2018

Brussels is increasingly becoming one of the most refreshing European cities in which to discover art. Young spaces like collective Ballon Rouge and the collaborative La Maison de Rendez-Vous are opening new spaces and giving a new dose of oomph to the scene. Last week’s Art Brussels, an annual fair in its 37^th edition with 148 galleries, was not too big, not too small – the goldilocks porridge of fairs. Here were six artists worth only a Eurostar away.

Merve Iseri

Turkish painter Merve Iseri was both a focus’ at Balon Rouge’s beautiful peach painted booth at the fair and the subject of a solo show at their downtown space. Her graphic large scale paintings touch on the body and landscape, balancing the figurative with a strong sense of abstraction and colour. An off-modernist breath of fresh air.

Kayode Ojo

One of the NYC’s hottest current artists, Ojo originally emerged from a photographic background which he still balances with a glamorous and intelligent take on sculpture. His mirrored, misused furniture works covered with diamante jewellery or lame dresses were perfectly paired at Martos Gallery’s booth with a sexy large scale images of a trans model.

Anicka Yi

Outside of the fair, the highlight of gallery night on Wednesday was Anicka Yi’s incredible show at Gladstone Gallery. Aiming to dissolve the boundaries between the human, animal, and vegetable, the show included sculptures that played with the living and kinetic. Its central room was filled with small animatronic moths flickering inside bulbous sculptural balls accompanied by a flickering electronic sounds.

Rubem Valentim

Mendes Wood DM devoted their booth at Art Brussels to Brazilian artists on their roster. It included some stunning paintings and a wood carved sculpture by the late Rubem Valentim, a self-taught artist who fused modernist ideas with the geometry, religion and aesthetic of Brazilian cultures. His Afro-Brazilian references were intentionally political, and the results exude vibrant energy.

Hoda Tawakol

It was impossible not to love Egyptian artist Hoda Tawakol’s sculptures at Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde’s booth. Made from tights, synthetic hair, rice, wadding and resin, these fetish-like small nudes are strongly rooted in the legacy of feminist 1970s art and the use of textiles as a loaded material. These gorgeous little fat figures questioned the representation of femininity.

Karine Rougier

Another off-fair highlight was Karine Rougier’s incredible detailed show at the young Fondation Thalie. Born in Malta and based in Marseille, this show brought together every element of her practise from scrapbook collages to tiny found object sculptures to her surreal miniature paintings. The work was filled with disembodied hands, doses of sex and horror and a dreamlike fantastical brilliance.

Tags: Art, Art Fair, artist, brussels, exhibition, gallery

Navigating the minefield of the creative industry at a time when housing costs have reach crisis point, funding for the arts is being monumentally slashed, and any kind of government support is a joke – is nigh on impossible. Luckily, there’s a force for active change in our midst. It comes in the shape of 26-year-old artist, feminist and curator Sophie Giblin, who is a founder of the award-winning Kollektiv art community, and determined to satiate the need for real, practical ‘how to’ knowledge for creatives just starting out. Sophie has put together, along with designer Sarah Todd and developer Luke Phillips, a free online manual that cleverly, and plainly, details how to do various things such as run collaborative projects, use alternative funding methods like crowdfunding and open galleries in derelict spaces.

“Life as a creative can be tough. Funding is being cut, rent is high, inspiring opportunities are scarce. It all seems really miserable, but we can and must stay creative. The new youth led DIY collectives shouldn’t be deterred by the difficulties. They deserve a helping hand and that’s why we’ve made everything we’ve learnt over the past two years completely open source. We like to choose collaboration over competition.” – Sophie Giblin

Everything you could want to know – from how to handle a problematic landlord to prepping a space for an exhibition – is beautifully categorised and easy to navigate, via the website’s no fuss (but still aesthetically pleasing) scrolling design.

Readers and fellow creatives are also encouraged to engage with the project by tweeting any thoughts and additional questions with the hashtag #KollektivSchool – further ensuing there is no dead end to the invaluable information being provided.

Kollectiv has been running as a Kickstarter funded organisation for over two years now, and its overall message is this: “make ideas into realities, don’t settle for unfair treatment and learn by taking the lead. Make your own way and regret nothing. Show the #haters what you’re made of and don’t let the realities of post education stifle your creativity.” We’re down with that.

kollektivgallery.com/manual

Tags: Art, Books, collaborations, creatives, exhibitions, funding, gallery, help, ideas, kollektiv, manual, sophie giblin, start-up

Staffed by five friends who met in the silk-screening studio at HAW Hamburg art college, Kingdrips opened their gallery-cum-skateshop-cum-graphic design offices in their small one room basement space back in December last year. The guys are the height of skater-boy cool but the highlights of the shop are Maren Szeymies’s masterfully hand-stitched hooded sweatsuit dresses, and super-soft organic cotton T-shirts which provide the canvas for slinky line drawings of irate chihuahuas, taggers, kittens, kissing couples and seagulls.

www.kingdrips.de

Tags: ana, Design, gallery, Hamburg, shop