There aren’t many exhibitions where the audience is serenaded by an all-male choir chanting sea shanties. Bloomberg New Contemporaries, an organisation which showcases emerging UK artists previewed their latest cohort at the Camden Art Centre earlier this month. 

Mediums were experimented with - moving images, oil and linen, canvas and miniature chalk figurines. In the back of the first gallery, dozens of dolls hung in rows from the ceiling on nearly invisible strings, part of an installation by Iga Koncka about anti-abortion protests in Poland. Iga described how ‘as a woman I felt like I was being trapped ... the government sort of imposing what I can, what I can’t do’. The dolls were taken from the pagan ritual of Topiene Marzanny, where to welcome in the Spring Iga explained ‘you drown one of Marzannas, these dolls’. The installation played with theatre, Iga wanting the dolls to capture ‘how you sort of experience the hardcore hanging of something’. As well as the dolls she took ‘inspiration from the Mexican Pavilion in Venice’. Before another curious group approached, Iga explained why she felt the need to enlarge the installation. ‘So people can walk through it and experience it - you are part of it’.

Beyond symbols, themes ranged from racialised oppression and environmentalism to the exploration of melodrama and cliché. Charan Singh’s video work focused on India and HIV programmes. He wanted to draw attention to ‘queer people being seen outside of the programmes, because very often in third world countries they are labelled as only that’. With his experience as a social worker in India and his previous collaboration with Visual AIDS in New York, Charan stressed the importance of widening representation of Aids and gay men. ‘Almost all the stories are about Aids beginning in the US, but the whole world is affected’. Many other pieces, including a floor to ceiling illustration of a slave next to a toppled chair, focused on what Charan termed the ‘deterritorialisation of those narratives’.  

A good deal of weaving and side stepping through a constantly growing crowd was required, particularly whilst circumnavigating men in underwear (part of an art installation entitled ‘Collective Cuddles’). The colourful diversity of the people attending the preview created a second theme, blurring the line between art and audience. Like Zayd Menk’s installation, where a screen, part of a structure of computers, radios and circuit boards, took a constant video of the crowd as we walked past, the evening itself captured the melting pot that is London. 

The New Contemporaries exhibition will be on display at the Camden Art Centre until the 14th of April with free admission.