What it means to make art

New Blood Art Emerging Art Prize 2023

New Blood Art is delighted to introduce a host of new artists. Many are 2023 graduates from institutions such as Carmarthen School of Art, Salford University and the Open College of the Arts, and encompass a breadth of practice from figurative oil paintings to abstract sculpture working with found objects to site-specific installations. These emerging artists call our attention to our relationship with the natural world in its vulnerable state (as in Harriet Williams' abstract immersive canvases emulating the palette and forms of the Welsh coastline) and offer new ways to engage with landscape by honouring traditional rural practices and rituals (in Lydia Carter's richly associative sculptures, grounded in craft and folk knowledge).

There is a close focus on materiality, with an emphasis on the questions of sustainability and reuse permeating the work of artists whose styles and techniques are as disparate as the bright fabric scraps of Charlotte Walker to the monotone plaster casts of Daniel Gent. Other artists investigate the self, and the self's place in a series of localities from the universal scale of Steve Cusson's carbon-based works to questions of gender and expression traced through the starkly different approaches of Lesley Morris and Rho McGuire. Despite the multiplicity of their modes of engagement, these new artists are united in their fierce engagement with the world around them, pushing questions of what it means to make art and how that art can alter our perceptions and help us think again.

Capturing What Can Be Lost III by Harriet Williams