Bloomberg New Contemporaries, ICA, SW1 - review

This is a hugely diverse show. In the past, this annual gathering of students and recent graduates witnessed irresistible surges of certain styles. In 1961, when it was known as Young Contemporaries, it marked the dawn of pop art, with the wit and colour of David Hockney, Allen Jones and others emerging from the Royal College of Art.

But you would be hard pressed to detect any trends this year. Instead, it reflects the wider contemporary art scene’s openness, its anything-goes inquisitiveness and, mostly, a desire to avoid bombast in favour of quiet, slow-burning works.

You often feel like you’re wandering around the artists’ studios. Jennifer Bailey sums up this spirit, with loosely connected objects that seem to be about material and touch: a photograph of a woman, perhaps in an art studio, printed on polyester and casually hung on the wall, next to clumsy-looking ceramic pots and small, colourful paintings of jugs.

Much of the best work is intimately scaled painting. Emanuel Röhss leaves the weave and the tone of the canvas to do much of the work, hinting at real objects, but seemingly immersed in the physical qualities of the paint. Samuel Taylor’s abstracts are rich in colour and potent with mystery, while Jackson Sprague makes enigmatic sculptures and paintings using crystacal plaster, which again resemble objects from the real world, but are far stranger.

As always, it’s an uneven show, but with much promise. As the Frieze Art Fair demonstrated this year, art’s direction is particularly unpredictable at present, but the best of these young artists are greeting that uncertainty with real relish.

Until January 13 (020 7930 3647, ica.org.uk)