Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2011

The Institute of Contemporary Art’s gallery space is notably quiet inside compared to other times I have visited. I wonder whether there are, perhaps, less people than usual here but on entering the lower gallery space, I am surprised to see that it is in fact fairly busy. It seems that the people here are just more quiet than usual, concentrating and engrossed in the Institute’s new exhibition, talking only occasionally, huddled around the exhibits. The works everyone is here to see are that of forty recent fine art graduates selected, from over 1300 submissions, by Pablo Bronstein, Sarah Jones and Michael Raedecker; together, these bright, emerging artists form ‘Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2011: In the Presence’.

Amongst the forty selected is RCA graduate Leah Capaldi whose performance-based works have also been part of the Catlin Prize final (Allure) and Exposure 10 (Peplos). On the opening day, I talk to Leah about her participation in Bloomberg New Contemporaries. “I’m thrilled to be in it,” Leah says as we discuss what it means to her to be selected for the show. “It’s a great show to be in and it’s great to know you’re being taken seriously.”

As I enter the show the first thing that strikes me is the curator’s subtle, spacious arrangement of works and sensitive treatment of colour. In the first room, I find myself staring into Selma Parlour’s Room,a square oil painting on linen. The depth of the piece is strangely disorientating, with a dull and dirty orange centre, surrounded by flat and soapy pastels. Opposite, the plinths that David Buckley’s curiously distorted bronze and plaster sculptures sit on, mirror Parlour’s colours in similar hues of spearmint and soft greys. Buckley’s sculptures reflect the light at moments: flickers of bronze peering through black patination and remnants of colour flashing across plaster-white. Even here, at the beginning of the exhibition, it is clear just how considered the curation is. When discussing it with Leah, she says: “There’s a real sense of energy to it.”

I ask Leah which work might be her favourite in the show. “I really like Joshua Bilton’s photographs and Minae Kim’s piece,” she replies after a little thought; Minae Kim’s work impresses me also. Her subtle intervention is easy to miss, yet commands a sort of dependency from the space when noticed, as if the space the piece occupies and the space around it needs Kim’s work to stay stable and not collapse.

In Leah’s own piece for the show, Allure, a group of men and women, each doused in entire 200ml bottles of the Chanel perfume ‘Allure’, enter the gallery space, dressed casually, wandering through the audience. “There are a few issues and questions I hope to challenge and raise through Allure,” Leah explains as we begin to talk a little about the ideas and reasons behind the piece. “One being gender divides: the different attitudes towards a woman wearing too much perfume and a man wearing too much perfume are striking. If people encounter a woman with too much perfume, people feel embarrassed for them, as if the woman’s trying too hard. She appears as being desperate, whereas if a man wears too much perfume, it’s like fox territory; it’s masculine.” Leah pauses. “And then there’s class, elitism. It’s ludicrous that an £86 bottle of perfume even exists!” The performance of Allure is the only artwork in Bloomberg New Contemporaries that doesn’t take up any consistent physical space. “In a way, although it is completely ephemeral, the piece does act as a quiet and subversive way of declaring space.”

Tomas Downes’ steel wall piece downstairs commands space in a different way; a frame-like sculptural object turns the gaps between itself flat, the light which bounces off the metal appearing like a natural, slowly moving shading of a pencil drawing. Another striking piece in the show is Nightworker, a video piece by Se-je Kim, hung in the corner of the first upstairs room. Kim’s piece seems to transform the idea of night as a time into night as a place. The protagonist in the work moves through eerie empty spaces with a noticeable slowness as the harsh white of fluorescent light reflects off her face as she stares into the camera.

A lot of the work in Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2011 that I find myself most attracted to deals with space and its transformation and manipulation, such as in Minae Kim’s piece and Tomas Downes’ piece. Being in the presence of a work that commands the space around it, in a way, commands the viewer also. Continuing to discuss Allure, Leah says: “I hope to challenge where people are located in the work. If a visitor to the gallery comes wearing ‘Allure’, they immediately become part of the piece. It’s about incorporating the viewer without asking their permission.” Other works in the show also manage what Leah talks about in different ways, enveloping the viewer in strangely buzzing colours, in the controlling of space and in obscure narratives through ambiguous places. The selection of work in this year’s exhibition is incredibly varied in subject and impact, and beautifully and sensitively put together. As I leave, I feel a pull of intrigue which will no doubt take me back to the exhibition before it is over: an intrigue which is present in a lot of the work, but also an intrigue of what the show is saying about, not only now, but the future. Bloomberg New Contemporaries is, in a sense, the beginning of things to come.

‘Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2011: In the Presence’ is at the ICA from November 23 2011 to January 15 2012. Leah Capaldi’s Allure is performed 4 times a week on Thursdays 6pm-9pm and Friday-Sunday 2pm-5pm. For more information visit http://www.newcontemporaries.org.uk/

Images: David Buckley’s sculpture, Marie Angeletti’s photographs, Samuel Williams’ video, and Selma Parlour’s Painting. Photo by: Steve White