11 October 2023 Somehow, despite everything standing in its way, art is flourishing in London. We’ve got rising rents, exorbitant studio fees, a lack of opportunities and a suffocating cost of living crisis, but still, the young artists of this city are making work, and doing it brilliantly. It would be easy (and lazy) to depict the London art world as entirely rarefied, nepotistic and exclusionary, but the truth is far more open, interesting and varied. There are artists from countless different backgrounds, with different viewpoints, working in all different parts of the city.
For me, this is the most exciting young crop of artists I’ve seen since I started at Time Out, more than a decade ago. They’re dealing with major topics like racism, exclusion, mental health, gender, sexuality and poverty, but with a ludicrous amount of joy, pop culture references, fun, aggression and weirdness, it’s actually, really, genuinely, properly thrilling.
So here are our nine favourite young artists working in London today, picked with the help of some of the best curators and gallery directors in the city. You might not be able to hang all of it on your wall, and some of it might even make your parents tut and say ‘I could do that’, but if that’s what you’re after, the past is that way. This right here, this is the future.
And the work they make is varied too. If you go by what the galleries are showing, you’d think London is nothing but wall-to-wall hazy figurative painting, but the variety out there is staggering. Satirical housework performances, immersive rodent-based film installations, ceramic friezes, Frasier Crane, Tupac Shakur, ska, Mariah Carey, sausages, teeth, paintings, sculptures, photos and everything in between; young London art in 2023 is weird, diverse, funny, exciting, challenging.
Through a haze of gore, animalism, fetish club aesthetics and nods to 1980s dystopian cinema, Jenkin Van Zyl makes art about freedom and escape. A recent show at Edel Assanti gallery led viewers through a giant rat’s mouth into a hospital/maze to watch a film. Another show at Rose Easton saw a huge latex beast trapped in a filthy glass cage. His work is full of latex costumes and biomorphic prosthetics, sensuality and grime, it’s sensual and terrifying, and it will absolutely make you wish you could dance with rats.
What would you say your art is about?
‘Desire, entropy, devotion, gossip, monstrosity, holes, fantasy and failure, bodily autonomy and the power structures that try to contain them, time as a Möbius strip, journeying to the end of the rainbow, sweat, competition, community, costume, the carnivalesque, reinvention, mischief, transformation, and deviance. I think that art is an important means to create pockets of progress and imagination within the larger political landscape of decay, deadlock and the long state of emergency.’
What inspires you?
‘I am drawn to fringe and subcultural communities, places where alternative ways of living are mapped out. I’m excited by what we can learn from the vital and complex world building that occurs within these spaces and the ways the body can be reimagined inside of them. My work often makes reference to different forms of nightlife, and the joy, ritual and tensions that erupt from it, but also to micro subcultures, fetishists, fandom, retreats, alternative religions and reenactment societies.’
What are the challenges of being an artist in London?
‘I love London, but it can be a hostile city. The Conservative government’s austerity measures have been in place for the entirety of the decade-plus that I’ve lived here, resulting in UK arts losing more than a third of its funding in that time. The generation of artists I’ve come up with in London has navigated an art world where funding and cultural institutions have been in an endless state of emergency. I think Industria’s vital recent Structurally F–cked report sums up the conditions of artists pay and work the best; the median hourly rate paid to artists was found to be £2.60, meaning that artists working in the public sector often earn significantly less than minimum wage, and sometimes paid nothing at all.’
What one thing could be done to better support young artists in London?
‘I believe the mobilising of a left-wing political movement and resulting government, with increase of public arts funding, would improve the lives of everyone in London.’
What would you do with the Turbine Hall?
‘I would (of course) want to mount a labyrinthine new film installation.’
Sarah McCrory, director of Goldsmiths CCA says:
‘In the arts we often discuss where the life of the artist ends, and their art begins, and the impact of that synthesis. Andy Warhol, Orlan, Joseph Beuys, and Gilbert & George are historical examples of a life and artistic practice that are totally entwined. Jenkin Van Zyl is another such artist, and is wonderfully visible, both artistically and personally. Van Zyl commits to the worlds he creates through his own attire, sporting horns, heels and exquisite makeup that would shame the technique pros of YouTube.’
