xyXV4

PERSPECTIVES
Kirsty Ogg, director,
New Contemporaries
1
Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition
2013, Spike Island, installation view
2
Kirsty Ogg. Photo: Eloise Parry
3
Hannah Regel, Tender Hooks, Bloomberg
New Contemporaries exhibition 2013
Degree shows have always been important to Kirsty Ogg. But
after joining New Contemporaries as director at the end of
2013, she’ll be looking at this year’s shows through slightly
different eyes.
“Degree shows are a kind of barometer for what new artists
are thinking about and how they are approaching the making
of work,” she says. “The reason that’s important is because it’s
something that changes on a generational basis – people grow
up in a different socio-economic, political context, surrounded
by a specific cultural framework, and that absolutely informs
their practice.”
Previously curator at the Whitechapel Gallery, the Londonbased
Glaswegian has in the past focused her attention on
degree shows in the capital – in particular Goldsmiths, the
Slade and the Royal College of Art. This year, she expects to
get to far more shows across the UK.
“What I’m looking for is innovation, interesting research; I want
to be surprised and challenged by something rather than have
my assumptions reinforced. Sometimes, you can look at work
and very clearly see the artists that have influenced it. To me,
that always feels a lot less satisfying than seeing something
that is more open, that gives you a sense of an identifiable,
individual practice being developed.”
The annual New Contemporaries exhibition consists of work
by new and recent graduates of fine art from UK art schools,
selected from open submission by an independent panel. This
year – its 65th anniversary – the selectors are Marvin Gaye
Chetwynd, Goshka Macuga and Enrico David. “There’s been
around 1400 submissions for 2014,” says Ogg. “The final show
will feature between 30 to 50 artists.”
Ogg graduated from the sculpture department of Edinburgh
College of Art in the early 1990s, and from 1993-1996 was
involved in running Transmission Gallery, an artist-run space
in Glasgow. Much has changed in the UK’s contemporary art
scene since then, not least the growth of the art market. This,
believes Ogg, has had a profound impact on the presentation
of work at degree shows.
“The rise of the commercial art market has changed how
graduating artists view success and how they view the level
of professionalism they need to have when they’re making a
show. So of course you get a lot of work that looks very slick,
very proficient and is recognizably ‘art’ – work that sits within a
particular trajectory of art making and exhibiting.”
For Ogg, though, it’s individuality and inventiveness, not
presentation skills, that leaves a lasting impression. “I’m
looking for work that shows a little break; a diversion down
a different path.”
1
2
3
15