new contemporaries

New Contemporaries was a degree show of recent graduates of art in A Foundation. The first piece I saw when I entered was the work "Cut" by Kristian de la Riva - a graphic, violent animation in which a number of self-destructive acts were performed by a simply rotoscoped individual. I found the work very hard to watch despite it being made cartoonish, I sense because the technique used was made to look like it was a traced version of a real act. The work found a humour in the depiction of pain, which is something I can identify with in my own work.

Melis van der Berg's enigmatic "The Orb Project" was a suspended metal orb that contained an odd mix of items. The piece to me seemed to represent a workspace perhaps belonging to an artist, the cage representing a sort of barrier separating the outside world from the artist. The barrier is tangible and solid, yet porous and free-flowing. "Alethia" by Darren Harvey-Regan was a small sculpture of a bird on a perch looking at a supposed mirrored image of itself, which actually transpired to be a print when the viewer got closer. The piece had a wit to it but also a sense of loneliness and sadness.

Joel Wyllie's works were the best of the exhibition, for me. They had a visual identity that was quite unlike anything else in the room. They were boldy depicted diagrams of conflict, in very boiled down sculptural or illustrative form. The works had simple compositions, as a child might arrange in play, although their tone was very distinct and artistic. It was the quirky, cleanly outlined nature of the work that I found really novel and intriguing.