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Viewing The landmark 75th edition of New Contemporaries returns to the ICA with 35 early career artists

The Wick Culture - Hazel O'Sullivan, Sidhe. Photo by Isabella Scott.

Above Hazel O’Sullivan, Sidhe. Photo by Isabella Scott.

The Wick Culture - Beverley Duckworth, Residue.

Above Beverley Duckworth, Residue.

The Wick Culture - Siomha Harrington, People are People and a Fool is a Fool.

Above Siomha Harrington, People are People and a Fool is a Fool.

The Wick Culture - Roo Dhissou, Eat, drink, chill, but don't hurt anyone's heart.

Above Roo Dhissou, Eat, drink, chill, but don’t hurt anyone’s heart.

Above Hazel O’Sullivan, Sidhe. Photo by Isabella Scott.

Above Beverley Duckworth, Residue.

Above Siomha Harrington, People are People and a Fool is a Fool.

Above Roo Dhissou, Eat, drink, chill, but don’t hurt anyone’s heart.

New Contemporaries

The Mall
15 January – 23 March 2025

This year is the landmark 75th anniversary of the annual exhibition New Contemporaries, as it returns to the Institute of Contemporary Arts, where it has been held variously since the 1960s. New Contemporaries is a truly unique platform for early career artists, often giving recent graduates their first public exhibition, and launching the careers of many more.

This year’s edition features thirty-five artists, selected by artists Liz Johnson Artur, Permindar Kaur and Amalia Pica through an open call. There is no specific theme but the selected artists share common ground – an interest in the natural world, sustainability, and kinship. It offers an overview of the pressing concerns and challenges facing not only artists but everyone today.

The mix is interesting – we are looking forward to seeing sculptures by London-based RA Schools graduate Motunrayo Akinola, performance pieces by Sun Oh, and paintings by Varshga Premarasa, forging a material connection to her parents’ homeland, Sri Lanka, by creating images from their stories, memories, films – and AI.

Viewing Tall tales and romanticised yarns in the mythic paintings of British artist Ryan Mosley

The Wick Culture - Ryan Mosley, We've Come To Take You Home, 2025. Photo courtesy of Josh Lilley.

Above Ryan Mosley, We’ve Come To Take You Home, 2025. Photo courtesy of Josh Lilley.

The Wick Culture - Ryan Mosley, Grape Harvest, 2025. Photo courtesy of Josh Lilley.

Above Ryan Mosley, Grape Harvest, 2025. Photo courtesy of Josh Lilley.

The Wick Culture - Ryan Mosley, Travelling Band, 2025. Photo courtesy of Josh Lilley.

Above Ryan Mosley, Travelling Band, 2025. Photo courtesy of Josh Lilley.

Above Ryan Mosley, We’ve Come To Take You Home, 2025. Photo courtesy of Josh Lilley.

Above Ryan Mosley, Grape Harvest, 2025. Photo courtesy of Josh Lilley.

Above Ryan Mosley, Travelling Band, 2025. Photo courtesy of Josh Lilley.

Ryan Mosley: Heavy is the Mountain

Josh Lilley
40, 46 Riding House St, London
17 January – 22 February, 2025

Ryan Mosley is Sheffield-based painter known for narrative, theatrical works that comment on art history, pictorialism and class. The artist’s distinctive works portray colourful characters from the bourgeois to the blue-collared to the Bohemian, belonging to an intricate world of Mosley’s making.

Mosley’s latest exhibition is Heavy is the Mountain, opening this week at Josh Lilley gallery. With his wry wit and expansive imagination the 45 year old artist has created a cast of new figures. Mosley took inspiration from his working class background in northern England, his own family history, as well as local legends, historical and mythological figures. “They appear on the canvas,” Mosley has said of his characters.

Art history fans will also find Mosley’s work rich in references, from Hogarth, Manet and Picabia to Peter Doig, as well as nods to surrealism, social and magical realism. Yet what Mosley creates is always something entirely of his own, complex and carnivalesque compositions that seems to jump off the canvas and follow you out of the gallery.

Viewing Sojourner Truth Parsons’s new works recreate the delight of nurturing a garden

The Wick Culture - Sojourner Truth Parsons, As famous as the moon. Photo courtesy of the artist and Pilar Corrias.

Above Sojourner Truth Parsons, As famous as the moon. Photo courtesy of the artist and Pilar Corrias.

Sojourner Truth Parsons: Blue Goes Away

Pilar Corrias
2 Savile Row
17 January – 8 March, 2025

Blue Goes Away is Sojourner Truth Parsons’s first solo exhibition with Pilar Corrias, and a great chance to see the Canadian-born artist’s works in the flesh in London. The show features all new paintings themed around intimacy – extracts of moments in life that might otherwise go unnoticed, clutched at and made immemorial on canvas.

These new paintings are the result of Parsons spending time nurturing her garden in the southern Catskills Mountains and observing the quietly changing seasons. Like many artists before her, the garden has been a revitalizing force and inspiration for the artist, becoming an allegory apt for painting about life and its vicissitudes.

The lily pads in her garden, the patch of light that appears faithfully in her bedroom, the changing spectrum of colours in a nearby forest where Parson’s enjoys regular walks – all of these sensations of light and reverie are translated into iridescent paintings. It’s just the sense of quiet appreciation and solace we need at this time of year.