Thank the Lord for New Contemporaries
... when Degree Shows get distilled
Spring is in the air here in my small corner of paradise, aka The Strath, a chain of small villages and towns in the Cairngorms National Park. Here, clean-smelling frosty mornings melt into cloudless blue skies. By 10am, daffodils which have swooned overnight, inch visibly towards the sun.
By lunchtime, wooly jumpers can be discarded and a bona fide heat enters your bones. Birds swoop and cheep with an urgency which sees them batter into windows and flit drunkenly from pillar to post.
Winter begone…
WHEN I was reviewing visual art regularly for The Herald newspaper, the rite of spring also heralded the coming of Degree Show Season.
For the uninitiated, this is an annual ritual in which thousands of final year students from art schools across the land stage their own mini exhibition alongside their peers. And are marked accordingly for their degree.
As I write, final year art students across the land are whipping themselves into the white heat degree show panic.
It is a dizzy-making experience for art students, assessors and the increasingly rare breed of visitor known as The Art Critic.
Reader, I am aware this is a third world problem, but have you ever tried to look closely at 300+ individual exhibitions in one go, reading gobbledegook artist statements accompanied by the siren sound of assorted audio works? With just a bottle of water and a random Crunchie found at the bottom of your back for sustenance…?
All the while, conscious your editor wants you to distil it into 500 words worth of crisp easy-to-understand copy (copy = olde newspaper word for content). And blimey O’Reilly, so many names to get right…
Thank the Lord then for happenings such as RSA New Contemporaries, an annual showcase hosted by the Edinburgh-based Royal Scottish Academy featuring work by more than 60 graduates selected from Scottish undergraduate degree shows the previous year.
It’s a big deal for any graduating art student to be selected to exhibit as a New Contemporary as it means creating and curating a pared down version of a degree show and exhibiting – and selling – in one of the best gallery spaces in the UK; the elegant Royal Scottish Academy building in the centre of Edinburgh.
It takes your work to a whole new audience. And, for an emerging artist, faced with real life outside art school, it can be a game-changer
There’s also a selection of exhibition prizes with a total value of £25,000 on offer, including the £15,000 Glenfiddich Artist in Residence Prize, supported by William Grant and Sons – this year won by Justine Watt from Dunbar.
She channelled her former life in the circus to make actual ring marks in the air. Making do and mending with old wooden chair legs by employing traditional methods.
Now in its 16th year, RSA New Contemporaries 2025 runs until Wednesday 16 April and features painting, sculpture, film-making, photography, printmaking, installation, performance and architecture.
I had a turn about this year’s show last week when I was in Edinburgh and it was fascinating to see how this new pack of emerging artists interpreted their respective worlds.
Artist Robbie Bushe RSA, this year’s New Contemporaries convenor, writes in the accompanying catalogue that this cohort of artists are from the generation ‘who had to pick up their practice again post-pandemic– emerging from their bedrooms, blinking into the fluorescent light of the studio, and trying to remember how to work with actual materials instead of a glitchy laptop screen. Unsurprisingly, that period has left its mark.’
Bushe talks about a kind of ‘Heath Robinson’ approach to creativity being the result, where ‘resilience, improvisation, and sheer determination take centre stage.’
He’s right. From the outset, as you emerge up the classically elegant stairs of the RSA, the first works you encounter are large scale sculptural pieces which sing with brio.
Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD) graduate Jen Meldrum’s disturbing yet hauntingly beautiful installation features a plaster cast figure, a crime scene of sorts and mounds of earth was the first work to hit me squarely between the eyes. It’s a poignant embodiment of the aftermath of sexual trauma and I can see – and hear – it still.
Next to this is Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) graduate Talullah Batley’s Pink Parlour, a life-sized Victoriana-esque Wendy House entirely furnished with handmade domestic objects, including framed pictures, a fireplace and a pair of Wally Dugs (genteelly-named Pink Parlour Mantle Dogs, 2025). This is world-building off the page/screen and in the world…
Madeleine Marg’s (DJCAD) installation, iPad Baby, will scare the bejasus out of all parents and carers, past, present and future. Marg has created a clever subversion of the fears we all have around early e-years. All-white baby and toddler mannequins are dotted around a sterile white world circled by a white scalextric-style track on which an iPhone powered train tootles around. The only colour comes from iPads and iPhones. One mannequin is sitting at a livid orange ipad, one is watching a giant television, another is in an all-white cot staring out vacantly. This is high stakes ‘play’ in a sterile world overrun by tech.
Another think big installation is DJCAD’s Ewan Douglas’ Albaland series in which he cocks a cheeky snook at the heederum-hoderum world of bonnie Scotland. I am loving his titles as much as his sculptures. To wit, Herd Mentality – five giant caged hairy heelan coos cuddling around Buckfast bottles in a pen, In a Town Near You! – a neon green revolving sign bearing the legends Methadone and Thirst Aid in a fancy font, and Clearance – a pastiche retail sale sign stating Highland Clearance Now On!
On the subject of abandonment, Jennifer Upson’s (University of the Highlands and Islands) The Necessity of Ruins drew me in for the sheer audacity of ambition and scale. Using steel and scaffolding ripped from her 200-year-old cottage in Moray, she has reassembled it all into a sculptural work for New Contemporaries, which – in all its fierce jagginess – is at completely at home in the large gallery space it currently inhabits.
On the subject of large-scale work fitting in, Fiona Goss’ (ECA) Palm of Possibility, made from steel, aluminium, woven borassus, palm and jute fibres, does everything apart from wave in the wind. It reminded me of George Wyllie’s Adjustable Palm Trees, inspired by his childhood visits to the People’s Palace and Winter Gardens on Glasgow Green. I loved it and felt minded to sit under it and read my book, but alas a bus was waiting for me…
There is also much ‘wall-based work’ (ie. painting) to enjoy. Calder MacKay (DJCAD) looks at family history to deconstruct societal tropes surrounding masculinity.
Erin McPhee’s (Glasgow School of Art) figurative work also digs deep into her visual memory bank to create oddly disjointed but memorable portraits.
Ben McGinlay’s (Gray’s School of Art) slightly wonky large scale paintings reflect the visual bombardment of advertising in all our lives. For some reason, his Physio Trout, burned its way into my synapses.
I’m aware I’ve barely scratched the surface with this review – a bit like my good old days reviewing degree shows. If I have a quibble it’s that the smaller, quieter works were overshadowed by the big sculptural beasts.
New Contemporaries 2025 is on until Wednesday 16 April if you still want to catch it. There’s even a free Family Art Day this Saturday. Just don’t sit your baby in front of that iPad…
ADDITIONAL NEW CONTEMPORARIES INFORMATION
RSA NEW CONTEMPORARIES 2025
Saturday 22 March – Wednesday 16 April
Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 12-5pm
Admission £8 / £5, free on Mondays
Royal Scottish Academy, The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL
Exhibition webpage
Academy Late
Friday 11 April, 8.30 – 11 pm
Tickets £15 | £12 RSA Friends, students and concessions
Academy Late, the vibrant closing celebration for New Contemporaries is back for the fifth year. This is a chance to experience the exhibition after dark and enjoy an unforgettable night of live music, powerful performances and artwork from Scotland’s boldest rising stars.
Free Family Art Day
Saturday 12 April, 1 - 3pm
Free, booking recommended
Get hands on in the galleries and enjoy an afternoon of creative family fun surrounded by the works on view in New Contemporaries. Big ones and little ones alike can get inspired, develop their artistic skills and create with others.
Exhibiting Artists
Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Dundee
Alana Ashby, Lewis Cavinue, Ewan Douglas, Aimie Harding, Fern Lovande, Calder Mackay, Madeleine Marg, Jen Meldrum, Amy Odlum, Rowan Roscher, Olivia Sinclair, R L Taylor
Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh
Jillian Lee Adamson, Ahed Alameri, Tallulah Batley, Robin Bigret, Amanda Cathy Bullock, Will Dutton, Niamh Finnigan, Fiona Goss, Hanna Lehtinen, Adam Lock, Ellis Ludlow, Agnes Roberts, Shiza Saqib, Christian Sloan, Justine Watt, Kitty Yarrow
Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen
Charlotte Forsyth, Kirsty Elaine MacDonald, Bronwyn Mackenzie, Ben McGinlay, Adrienne Murray, Cavan Reed-O'Connor, Bethany Reid, Lotta Wald
Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow
Ishbel Angus, Felix Bode, Francesca Grace Cecelia Cairns, Joe Cameron, Matthew Casey, Keir Chaggar-Brown, Double Pivot, Olivia Priya Foster, Amy Anna Graham, Eva Griffin, Mia Gwenllian, Lara Juneman, Jasmína Lustigová, Theodora Koumbouzis Maclellan, Liv Mather, Erin McPhee, Esther Metcalfe, Lola Pilkington, Coire Simpson, Connie Woods
University of the Highlands & Islands
Anna Charlotta Gardiner, Jennifer Upson
All of the artists you’ve picked out here are so interesting. Now wondering if I can manage to squeeze in a trip.
Even this show was too much for me. I need someone to do a selection of New Contemporaries. About 10, please!