RSA New Contemporaries is an annual exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy, showcasing selected works by recent graduates of the five Scottish art schools.
This year, owing to Covid-related delays, the work of graduates of 2021 is highlighted. Each member of an RSA Selection and Hanging Committee was assigned one of the art schools; they made their initial selections online, and in collaboration with an academic staff member from each school. A total of 57 graduates were chosen, and these were invited not only to submit existing work but also to make proposals for new projects. Finally, in March of this year, the exhibits arrived at the RSA.
From paintings to installations, drawings, sculpture, film, performance and print, there is such variety and interest in this spectacular and inspiring exhibition – qualities particularly to be admired and valued in graduates who were largely denied their all-important Degree Shows, and spent much of their final year working in lockdown conditions, often unable to access their studios, workshops and equipment.
An exhibit proving particularly popular when I visited was Emily Topping’s photographic project Common Ground, which explores how individuals used shared space during the pandemic. Emily (Edinburgh College of Art) spent October 2020 to May 2021 studying the landscape of The Meadows and Bruntsfield Links and talking to people she met there.
In the thirty two images displayed we see young parents, older people, students, children, babies and dogs enjoying their opportunity for exercise. The city needed to breathe; places like The Meadows made that possible. Visitors to the exhibition are taken back to lockdown, that strange time when outdoors suddenly became a place of escape. Common Ground has itself fostered more common ground, as people chat about their memories of social distancing and the need for outdoor spaces.
Louise Black (Duncan of Jordanstone, Dundee) looks at female forms and occupations, and the tensions between power and vulnerability. Her practice encompasses photography, word play, print, sculpture and installation. Here she shows two powerful sculptures suggestive of the womb and the brain. Each structure looks soft and pliable, each is constrained by steel clamps. Is it the patriarchy that controls women’s bodies and minds, or is it the idealisation of women by social (& other) media exerting unbearable pressures? Or are these both facets of the same thing? Black also shows Working Table, a wooden workspace that is part sewing loom, part dressing table and part surgical theatre, and at which she has performed Working table: Internal dialogue and the stitching of layering. She said:
‘Materials and processes embedded within the installation are charged with both tenderness and violence, aiding a need to express internal emotions.’
Erin Thomson (Gray’s School of Art) explores obscure moments and events in history through painting and drawing. She turns writing, music or data points into ciphers based on imagery, patterns or numbers that she finds relevant to each project. Thomson’s 1st May 1681 is based on the journals of two 17th century pirate explorers, William Dampier and Lionel Wafer. Meticulously drawn on aged paper, these patterns are innovative and thought-provoking, encouraging us to see a story in a completely new way.
A Mouse King, lost in the digital spaces around Glasgow at Christmastime, is the star of delightful short film The Mouse, by Julia Johnstone (Glasgow School of Art.) Digital screens around the city centre provide the stage for the mouse’s performance. The film was commissioned by GSA itself for its 2021 digital Christmas card, and was produced by a creative team from GSA, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the City of Glasgow College. Also exhibited are the Mouse King’s beautiful purple, black and white costume (top) and the intricate model for his crown.
Earthy Delights 2, a delicate sculpture by Elvey Stedman (Duncan of Jordanstone, Dundee) suggests branches, or perhaps a carousel, from which small objects – feathers, flies, a spider – were suspended. Fragility and ephemerality are central to Steadman’s practice, and here she explores a kind of naivety and otherworldliness, emphasised by the soft appearance of the central structure, and the light, neutral colours of many of the items it carries.
Jasmine Forbes (Edinburgh College of Art) is interested in ideas of tame and wild; she investigates and deconstructs these concepts through versions of the pet cat – its domestication never undermining its innate independence. Forbes’ painting Clowder shows two cats reclining much as lionesses might in the wild – but these cats also have a strangely human aspect, they could be women sunbathing on rocks. I love the disdainful, sarcastic expression on the cat facing the viewer. Through them, Forbes interrogates ideas of femininity and the gaze. Meanwhile Glaring is a striking, terrifying sculpture – a furry domestic cat (fur ‘lovingly harvested’ from Forbes’ own pet!) is sitting on its owner’s face and digging its claws into their eyes. You can never completely tame cats, and for cat lovers that is their enduring appeal.
Four colourful supermarket trolleys, balanced on top of one another, and full of painted traffic cones, one topped with a rather surprised-looking rubber duck, form Hooligan Sadikson** (Duncan of Jordanstone, Dundee)’s exhibit RSA NEW ContempoRarities shopping trolley everything is for sale. Sandikson, who is Mexican and has previously lived in industrial units, making street art and taking part in collaborative performances, looks at the structures and relationships that determine whether objects are allowed to be called art. For them;
‘the Real is raw and untameable and therefore beyond commodification.’
Finally, my one of favourite pieces in the exhibition – sadly rather hidden away in one of the lower rooms – is by Ruth Tait (University of the Highlands and Islands.) Tait’s deeply moving work Widows is based on the true story of the women left behind when, in the 1600s, a mini Ice Age led to the failure of the crops on the remote island of Harray. Fifteen men set out to find food for their families. A blizzard descended; they all died. Tait, who is from Birsay (Orkney), shows fifteen black bin bag figures, the widows who were left to cope with their grief, and to support their children. And laid across the back of a chair, a fragile paper wedding dress. Tait said:
‘…the wedding dress shows the fragility of hopes and dreams, of memories, of life itself, the fragility of the happy ending. I want these women’s voices to come through, showing silence isn’t silent at all, but full of sound.’
A haunting soundtrack plays fragments of the women’s words and thoughts as they press on, keeping things together as best they can.
RSA New Contemporaries 2023 is a show full of variety and ideas. Our Scottish art schools have once again discovered and nurtured an impressive array of talent.
Although the show has now closed at RSA, you can still view many of the works, together with bios of award winners, on the RSA website.
*Louise Black’s work has been selected for the Mother Art Prize exhibition at the Zabludowicz gallery in London. More information here. The exhibition runs until 25 June 2023 and admission is free.
**Hooligan Sadikson’s work is currently exhibited at the Woosh gallery in Miller’s Wynd Carpark, Dundee. (Opposite the Orwell).
