Graduates feature in major London exhibition

The Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition features the most promising up-and-coming artists in the UK, and MA Printmaking graduates Mustafa Sidki and Jane Stobart, and former PhD student Andrea Medjesi-Jones, are three of the 55 artists whose work has gone on display at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA).

The exhibition, which is celebrating its 65th anniversary, attracted nearly 1,400 submissions this year.  Previous exhibitors include Jake & Dinos Chapman, Damien Hirst, David Hockney and last year’s Turner Prize winner Laure Prouvost.

Chris Owen, Head of the Cambridge School of Art at Anglia Ruskin, said: “Many artists showing in this exhibition have gone on to become household names and we’re delighted that three former students are flying the flag for Anglia Ruskin this year.”

Mustafa Sidki, who graduated with an MA in Printmaking in 2013, based his work on memories of his Muslim upbringing.  He said: “Until my late teens I grew up in a strict Muslim household.  My Father was an Imam.  From an early age we were instructed in the teachings of the Koran and taught to memorise many prayers, and fasted during the month of Ramadan.

“Years later and as an atheist, I reflect upon my Islamic traditional upbringing.  The religious indoctrination is deeply embedded still and has surfaced through my work as an artist.  My relief prints are based upon my fading memories of prayers and fragments of the rituals that formed the structure of the Islamic faith that influenced every part of my life.”

Fellow MA Printmaking graduate Jane Stobart (whose work is featured above) said: “My prints are inspired by industrial work.  I have gained access to draw within some amazing places that have taken me behind the closed doors of industry, including a tube train maintenance depot, sewage pumping stations, construction sites, the Bankside Power Station, the National Grid and an extensive period spent at a bell foundry.

“The skilled workers that I draw are relatively invisible, in that people outside of industry generally do not see what occurs.  I have found it to be a constant source of inspiration. I have hundreds of drawings, made directly at these locations.

“I am interested in the actions of the skilled manual workers, who use their bodies in wholly different ways to that of any domestic situation.  I often attempt to create frozen moments that suggest a tension and ambiguity.”

The exhibition runs until Sunday, 25 January, 2015 at the ICA on The Mall, and more information is available at www.newcontemporaries.org.uk

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For more press information please contact:
Jon Green on t: 0845 196 4717, e: jon.green@anglia.ac.uk
Jamie Forsyth on t: 0845 196 4716, e: jamie.forsyth@anglia.ac.uk
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