New Contemporaries is old – very nearly venerable. Founded to spotlight art school graduates in the postwar gloom, the annual exhibition started in 1949. The selectors have been professors, students, art world mandarins and even the director of the National Gallery, with skipped years and brewing outrage. It has been shored up by backers as various as British Telecom, the Arts Council, Bloomberg and (bless her) Bridget Riley’s Art Foundation. Every edition is different, and yet always the same: an opportunity for gazing, arguing, star-spotting and generally observing the waterfront of contemporary art.
This year is vital viewing, and not just because it has been so judiciously selected from open submission by a trio of acclaimed mid-career names: Heather Phillipson, Helen Cammock and Sunil Gupta. The 55 artists work in every medium from watercolour, oil and charcoal to tapestry, video and installation. Some are in their early 20s, others in their late 40s (you only have to be a fledgling graduate or postgraduate to apply) so there is an immense range and depth to the show.
