Lili Murphy-Johnson is an artist working between performance art and jewellery. She is interested in value and how it is measured and changeable. In her work there is a focus on the way the meaning or value of an object can disappear or alter, depending on the viewer. Lili’s jewellery and performances poke at the meaning of being ‘correct’ in our behavior and interactions. She uses humour and subversion to work through her ideas, drawn to where humour can become awkward and tense.
Harriet Gillett (b.1995 East Yorkshire) is an artist living and working in London. She received her MA in Fine Art at City and Guilds art school in 2022 after studying a BA in English Literature at Edinburgh University (2017). Recent exhibitions include group shows at Brooke Benington, Roman Road, Delphian x Saatchi and duos with Soho Revue and New Normal Projects. She was shortlisted for the Ingram prize in 2020 and is one of the 2023 New Contemporaries. In 2024 she will undertake the Palazzo Monti Residency.
Efrat Merin is an artist working across multiple mediums, offering a queer retelling of mythical narratives. In 2020 she had her first solo show ‘Dream. Figure’ at Maya Gallery, Tel Aviv. In 2022, she graduated from Turps Studio Programme in London, was awarded the Darbyshire Award for Emerging Art, took up an artist residency at Frans Masereel Centrum, Belgium, and participated in group shows across the UK. In 2023 she had a solo show ‘Anima Mundi’ at Darbyshire Ltd, London, participated in a residency and had a solo show at van GoghHuis, Zundert, and was selected for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2023. Her work has been featured in many publications, among them Floorrr Magazine, Portfolio Magazine, and ArtMaze Mag.
Hailing from Central Saint Martins, Alannah Cyan has formed her practice through tender, fantastical and self-reflective works across the disciplines of painting, video, sound and photography. Raised in Switzerland and Ireland, the intersections of home, nature, and identity come together to form a dreamlike perspective. Grounding this perspective in queerness, she has matured her practice to focus on erotic photography. In an appreciation for queered bodies in this field – and a need to contribute to their visibility – she has a sensibility towards the powerful, sensual nude, presented in contexts that invite a curiosity beyond their erotic value. With this, she aims to push boundaries in the field, inviting artist and audience alike to see erotica anew.
Anne McCloy completed her MFA at Goldsmiths in 2023 and is exhibiting at Camden Arts Center as part of New Contemporaries 2023. Her interdisciplinary practice involves drawing,painting, poetry, performance and film and currently examines narratives around personal and collective experiences of Irish womanhood in the context of the political, the social and the mythic, and considers creative outputs as tools of resistance, revolution and transformation. In Mobilise the Poets (2022) McCloy transmutes photojournalist Clive Limpkin’s iconic photo of Bernadette Devlin in the Battle of the Bogside, Derry, 1969, imbuing the image with a new and vital shamanic energy. Anne McCloy has taught extensively as an Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins and University of the Arts London.
Emma Sheehy creates imaginative spaces that are escapist, funny and folkloric. Often drawing on mythologies and medieval-inspired imagery, she builds up a collection of creatures to play with time and again, using this research as a means of understanding the past.
Joshua Woolford is a transdisciplinary artist working between performance, painting, sculpture, sound, video, and installation. Woolford’s work is rooted in extensive cultural research, drawing from literature, music, and art, as well as personal experiences of being a member of the queer Black Afro-Caribbean diaspora living in London. Through their practice, Woolford acknowledges and confronts experiences of violence, aggression, and misalignment through abstract forms and sounds, verbal language and the body. They embrace reflection, transition and movement as powerful and disruptive states that actively challenge prevailing narratives. By engaging with these themes, Woolford strives to dismantle established norms and provoke critical dialogue with others about the wider socio-political landscape. Ultimately forging a deeper understanding of their own identity and their hopes for the future. Woolford graduated Cum Laude from the Design Academy Eindhoven (Media and Culture), and more recently with an MA from the Royal College of Art (Contemporary Art Practice). They are the 2023 Research and Interpretation Artist in Residence at Tate and a New Contemporaries 2023 Artist. Notable exhibitions include live performances at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, as well as exhibiting and performing in multiple institutions across London, including HOME by Ronan Mckenzie, Soho House, Somerset House, Black Cultural Archives, the V&A and Tate Britain.
Luke Anthony Rooney is a visual artist and designer with a background in Fashion Design. Luke showed season seasonal collections on schedule at London Fashion Week before re-directing his practice into a Fine Art context. Luke’s research and practice investigates how textiles can be used to create protest and embody resilience. Luke’s research has taken them to Americas Deep South of Alabama and Mississippi to work with the Gees Bend quiltmakers and the Arizona desert to work with Native American communities.
