The conceit of New Contemporaries is that each year, a fresh generation of artists ascends into the established art order. This idea is fanciful enough—not many from previous cohorts have left much behind—until one considers that this rite of passage affirms the established edifice far more than it promotes new entrants. 

This year’s edition spells stasis more than most, and the selectors are to blame. Pio Abad, Louise Giovanelli, and Grace Ndiritu picked painters who hate painting, sculptors too lazy to sculpt, and video artists with subjects that say nothing. This strategy extends the old guard’s reign of mediocrity for one extra cycle.

It is one thing, however, that the institutions have run out of ideas; is a younger generation of post-Covid artists so disaffected that they refuse to engage with the matter at hand? Perversely, matter is everywhere. Macabre muralist Eliza Wagner’s, tiler Ally Fallon’s, or whitewash aficionado Deborah Lerner’s paintings are barely sketches for an idea. Brutalist wannabe William Braithwaite’s and deadpan welder Varvara Uhlik’s redundant sculptures need never have been fished, since neither these artists, nor washing machine repair man Oliver Getley, thought twice about the world they would enter.

(In this desolation, Christopher Steenson’s slide and tape poetic landscapes stand out for the fidelity they show to their form, even if they are heavily affected.)