Former Editor of Art Review and author of their acclaimed supplements of the best students graduating every year, Catriona Warren has for the last couple of years been assisting in the curation of the annual Anticipation art shows.
Following on from last year, Catriona has once again been tracking the progress of several students throughout the year, and been around all the end of year shows this summer. to present her personal selection of the 10 best artists graduating from colleges this year.
Should you wish to enquire about any artist you see in the online exhibition, please email info@murmurart.com or call us on 0207 221 4464.
Catriona's accompaniment to her choices is also available to read within the online exhibition
"It was good to see Goldsmiths back on form with what, by common consent, was the strongest of the MA shows this year. (The less said about their BA show, though, the better). There were more painters than usual, and I'll follow with interest the careers of Annie Hotte, Luke Rudolph and Chang Hwan Park. It was two sculptors, though, who stood out for me.
"I remember Adam Thompson as an outstanding BA at Goldsmiths, making monochrome inkject prints where there was a wonderful velvet intensity to the black. The pared down simplicity of his degree show installation seemed exceptionally mature for such a young artist. Now an MA at Goldsmiths, there is a spare elegance to his work and the way it was displayed. I particularly liked Proposal for an Eclipse made from brass and porcelain found objects, his untitled found object in a cast aluminium frame, and his slender, soaring eight metre aluminium pole wrapped in inkjet print.
"An installation by Adam has been selected for 'Newspeak', Charles Saatchi's show of new British art which opens at the Hermitage in St Petersburg in October and comes to London to the Saatchi Gallery in June 2010.
"Also at Goldsmiths was Bahamas-born sculptor Blue Curry. Particularly striking was his sculpture made from a bull shark jaw from which 567 hours' worth of shiny cassette tape pooled elegantly on the floor. Hanging the tape took three weeks up a ladder.
"Sometimes what you see in a degree show is not fully representative of the artist's work. At the Royal College of Art, Lucy Moore showed a slide projection for her degree show rather than the work through which I first got to know her and which I much admire, her quiet yet powerful small canvases, the spare thick brushstrokes laden with colour.
"At the Royal Academy Schools, I especially liked the work of Nick Goss. He works out the ideas for his large canvases in covetable small watercolours on tissue paper (priced modestly at £300, he sold 20 at his show). The paint makes the tissue paper pucker so the watercolours become little objects in themselves. The carousel animals from Bolivia that are explicit in the watercolours are less obvious in his large canvases as his work moves further towards a sense of abstraction.
"Also at the Royal Academy, Jack Newling made clever use of a mixture of painting, screen printing and digital printing to create an installation that was bought by top collector Anita Zabludowicz. Jack will be in this year's 'New Contemporaries' currently at the Cornerhouse in Manchester and opening at the Rochelle School in East London in November.
"Another intriguing installation was Tim Ellis's mix of found and created objects carefully juxtaposed. Both Tim Ellis and Nick Goss will be in the Saatchi show of student work, 'New Sensations' at the Rochelle School in October, and in 'Newspeak', his pick of new British art (see Adam Thompson).
"One artist stood out at the Chelsea MA show, the sculptor David A. Smith. I especially liked Warlord, an elaborately carved wooden architectural bracket with a blue neon halo above, and Reckoning, a grappling hook flocked in purple velvet which transformed the hard, cold surface into something sensuous and inviting to the touch - so inviting in fact that people actually did reach out to touch it. (His work seemed to invite audience participation with viewers having photographs of themselves taken standing below the halo, which was placed just above head height).
"For me, and for others I spoke to, the best BA show this year was the sculpture at Wimbledon. The exhibition was very professionally mounted and the standard was high, but three artists in particular caught my eye. Antonia Tibble showed a cleverly made, witty video in three parts showing the perfect domesticated woman of the era of the 1930s-50s. Demurely sexily corseted, their moves synchronised like a Busby Berkeley chorus line, they hoover, iron and cook.
"With Tyson Howard there is an element of tension in his work. In one piece calipers tightly hold a small beetle which would be crushed by just one more turn of the screw. In another, a bear trap made from a shark's jaw, you wonder if just one touch would make the vicious teeth snap shut. A wall piece of antlers and a balloon is precariously held in place by a bungee - nothing else attaches it to the wall. Will the antlers burst the balloon? Will the piece collapse and fall?
"Eight and It's Done and Six Little Lights by Nick Bailey seem to be control panels, but for what? A bank of rows and rows of switches operate a small red light - but what else besides? What will happen if all eight keys on his control panel are simultaneously turned? There is a certain obsessiveness to the work, which is beautifully crafted."
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