The Old Town Magick art collection

Contemporary Art & Prints

Contemporary art describes art of the recent past and present, embracing many materials, subjects and approaches rather than one visual style.

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About Contemporary Art

Painting and drawing coexist with photography, installation, digital work and other practices. Artists may engage with identity, place, ecology, historical collections or the circulation of images. The term's starting date varies between museums and historical accounts, so the date and context of an individual work remain important.

In this catalogue, contemporary works should be distinguished from historical reproductions and newly made designs inspired by earlier art. A modern print of an old painting retains the historical date of its source artwork.

Characteristics

Contemporary art describes art of the present and recent past, with a starting point that varies between institutions. It is not a style that can be recognised by appearance alone. Painting and sculpture sit alongside installation, moving image, performance, photography, sound and software. Artists may build on older traditions, appropriate existing imagery or make the encounter with a site or audience part of the work.

Questions of identity, memory, migration, environment, technology and power often shape contemporary practice, but no subject is compulsory. Look at how materials carry meaning and how the work is encountered: a participatory installation has different conditions from a printed image. Edition, duration, instructions and digital formats may be as relevant as physical dimensions. Historical categories remain useful as reference points rather than a fixed ladder of progress. A contemporary work that uses a medieval subject or painterly realism retains its own date and context, even when its imagery looks older.

Notable artists & makers

Cindy Sherman — Uses staged photography to examine constructed identities and familiar visual conventions.
Kara Walker — Explores the histories and violence carried by racial representation.
El Anatsui — Creates large works whose reused materials connect surface, trade and history.

Notable works

Historical examples for context. Where a print is available in our collection, the work links to its product page.

Untitled #228 — Cindy Sherman — A staged photographic image from 1990 that reworks historical painting conventions.
Bleeding Takari II — El Anatsui — A 2007 work whose assembled materials create a flexible, textile-like surface.