![]() Transcending form and medium, it is painterly but firmly grounded in a range of photographic techniques. At around three metres long, it has immense visual power from a distance – but its curious details emerge as you move closer. Carlos AngueraĪnguera (a graduate of GSA) is exhibiting one work for New Contemporaries – an epic, tapestry-like photographic collage titled Club Tanners, Crowd Sitters, Shadow Eaters. The film is a vivid and intimate collage of drawings and performances, with its thoughtful and beguiling costumes and masks, which make reference to the myths of the Bugonia Ox and Samson’s Lion, in which bees play a central role. Weaver draws on Greek and Roman mythologies, who believed that bees are the messengers of the gods – this metaphor operates to highlight the precarious entanglement of bees and human existence. In the film, bees are shown to be an all-seeing witness to human activity. Her accompanying film Ultraviolet Dreams is delightfully inventive and un-pretentious. Based on the designs of ornate sculpted beehives found in Germany and in Scandinavia, they feature stylised faces that act as icons, like those that often embellish religious buildings. Three beehive sculptures, made of papier mâché and beeswax, are spray painted in vivid pink, yellow and gold. While many artists in this year’s New Contemporaries make reference to ecologies in their practice, Weaver’s exploration is the most thorough and comprehensive. Godjamanian’s films provoke us to think – whose suffering is deemed worthy of empathy by the West, and whose is not?Įmily Weaver’s sculptures and film speak to the fundamental role that bees play in the Earth’s ecosystems. This has become especially evident with the war in Ukraine, and how European nations have expressed horror and concern in response to the conflict, while ignoring the plight of people fleeing conflict in the global south. ![]() The choice to use depictions of two lesser-known conflicts, both taking place on the fringes of Europe, draws attention to how the West represents conflict through its media – often-time, to privilege its own agenda. Godjamanian poses the question – how do we respond to images of human suffering that float through news channels and social media in an endless loop? ![]() The films capture the cycles of loss, grief and trauma that conflict creates, and forces the viewer to examine how they consume images of human suffering. The first, found footage of a Cypriot woman grieving at the loss of her home following an eviction during the island’s conflict in 1974: the second, a depiction of a house burning from the ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in Armenia and Azerbaijan. Godjamanian, a graduate of ECA, is exhibiting two short but haunting films that capture dual scenes of grief. This work also reflects on KO’s experience of moving to Glasgow as a Black woman, evidenced by the saltire flag and neon pink traffic cone held by the smaller figure. The way that the sculpture stands, epic, firm and resolute, channels Simone Leigh’s installation at last year’s Venice Biennale, and its desire to take up space also connects the practices of the two artists. The sculpture itself is colossal, and there is a real sense of the amount of labour that has gone into its construction: a combination of papier mâché, woodwork and textiles. Of all the works on display, the joy and relishing of making is most evident in KO’s practice. The artist’s work demonstrates that imaginative and artistic interventions into such heavy conversations are needed – and that artists can, and should, play a crucial and critical role in deciding what fills our public spaces. Her work satirises these monuments while posing serious questions about why monuments to imperialists and slave traders are still standing – and what (and who) should replace them. The artist’s playful papier mâché and textile constructions feed into current conversations around the relevance of public statues in our civic spaces that depict problematic, colonial-era figures. A large Black figure, hands on hips, towers over the audience below her, a smaller figure rides on horseback, saltire and pink traffic cone in hand, mouth wide in ecstasy. Glasgow-based Josie KO’s epic and evocative sculpture Lady in Blue is the immediate star of the show, visible as soon as you climb the stairs to the Academy’s upstairs space.
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