A review of the 75th annual New Contemporaries exhibition, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. January 2025.
A muppet smokes a cigarette and sermons of oblivion.
Opposite, a girl watches him, glitching in some Afro-surreal memoryscape. A cinematic Scottish oil rig breathes flutes into the same room; and behind, strangers are attempting to communicate through Google Translate in on a Soviet train.
These places meet here; in some four-walled film-cave at the 75th New Contemporaries exhibition, this year re-homed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. Positioned just one ceremonial stretch from Buckingham Palace, it is alive with conversation and background music. Thirty-five burgeoning voices traverse the urgent and steep terrains of our current climate, confronting some familiar past with the prospect of imagined futures, alert – here, it is more personal than commentary, and more envisioned.
This fearless and sensitive generation transform everyday critique into glimpses of apocalyptic futures: where watercress sprouts peacefully from the overflow of residual garb; where stoney legs of some long-gone structure jet out of the concrete floor; sardines flop mercilessly under a robot ring net, dumped. Wrestling with commodified borders and evolving traditions, these independent artists sculpt the intangible into playthings, their energetic approach charged by a well-worn friction.
Here, it is 1998, and Amir is laughing about being smuggled across the Turkish border in a suit and nice shoes. It is 2025, and Elliot Roy is skimming the screen-scroller’s attention in a whirring snap to the present.
And connecting just one floor above are the antennae; the intimacies; the exposed nerves of the social body. The intuitive desire to belong stained into satin cloth. Meeting at mealtime is Sophie Lloyd’s saccharine consumer imbued with additives and lead; Síoma Harrington’s painted creature of sanguine cheeks and honest kneecaps; home-baked video-collage and dinner tables and huge monoliths.
This is an assembly more important than the sum of its parts. This choreographed, context-rich display is infused with all the poised temperament of a generation who have free-fallen into resistance (and will laugh on the descent). It is knowing, it is new, and it is here until 23 March.
First image: Joshua Whitaker, The Form an Object Takes in Oblivion, moving image still, 2024
Second image: Valentino Vannini, ANON – DTF, Concrete, insultation foam, metal, branches, glass, petroleum jelly, lube, 2024
Kate Butler 
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