Each summer, London's top art schools open their doors to show the next wave of creative talent. The first of 2025, exhibitions from the Slade School of Fine Art at UCL and the City & Guilds of London Art School, were filled with fresh perspectives and exciting voices.

Both schools presented bold, confident work across media.

Below, we’ve selected our standout emerging artists from each school. These young artists impressed us not just with technical skill, but with ideas that felt urgent, personal, and culturally aware.

City & Guilds Art School: Young Artists Who Master Craft and Challenge Tradition

Wednesday 14th May, Kennington Road.

City & Guilds has long been known for its craft-focused approach. In 2025, the school’s graduates fused those foundations with innovative thinking. Sculpture, drawing, and mixed media stood out this year, often exploring mythology, material histories, and personal memory.

Thomas Chorley

Grenfell, Day in the Life - Charcoal, Iron of Blood.2024, Gesso, ink, charcoal, PVA and acrylic paint on glue primed canvas 612 x 864 mm

This painting was made in anger and frustration while thinking again about the tragedy of the Grenfell tower fire in 2017 which claimed 72 lives and which was an act of institutional violence against society’s most vulnerable and neglected and which was the product of a laziness, greed dishonesty and apathy which defined the attitude towards the tower block taken by senior RBKS officials and the companies they worked with on renovating and re cladding Grenfell. The painting however primarily contemplates the entrapment of the fire’s victims and is more a meditation on violence, suffering and death than an analysis of the corruption that caused it. I hope and believe that this painting fully respects the families of the dead and the survivors of Grenfell and that it is sensitive to their suffering and loss and doesn’t appear merely a calculated exploitation of tragedy for art.

Kubra Aliyeva

“Dialogue with the past” Making and not knowing where it is going, the shape it is taking or not taking, having wandering thoughts and unresolved discussions. “This project is an exploration of cultural belonging, memory, and the transmission of women’s voices across generations. This project is a way to give material form to the ephemeral yet enduring influence of İşıq (the first Azerbaijani women’s newspaper published in 1911). The work explores themes of Public and Private spaces- venues of cultural gatherings opposed to the intimacy and privacy, Ephemerality and Permanence- the fleeting existence of the newspaper İşıq versus its lasting influence, Transmission and Continuity- the passage of knowledge and memories from one generation to the next.”

Together, these artists showcased the energy and intelligence that Slade continues to nurture. They proved that the future of British art is not just in good hands—it’s being redefined entirely.

Slade School of Fine Art: Confident, Conceptual, and Unafraid to Experiment

Wednesday 28th May, Gower Street.

The Slade 2025 graduate show offered a wide range of media, including installation, performance, digital work, and strong examples of expanded painting. Many artists explored identity, environment, and technology with nuance and originality which made the show as a whole, incredibly enjoyable.

Nyamtselmeg (Emma) Myagmarnaran & Nyamtsengel (Ella) Myagmarnaran

Mongolian twins, Ella and Emma, produce these luminous acrylic on canvas paintings which offer an immersive dive into layered forms and celestial colour fields. Their compositions ripple with organic movement, evoking dreamscapes that blend cosmic energy with human connection. Each canvas feels both expansive and deeply intimate.

Mary Pye

Gather my every power-to-love (2/2) 2024

Mary Pye’s oil paintings hover between abstraction and figuration, with ghostly forms surfacing through rich fields of colour. Her style is intuitive and atmospheric—gestural marks drift and blur, while tones melt into one another in dusky pinks, moody blues, and earthy reds. This fluid blending creates dreamlike compositions that feel both deeply personal and open-ended, conjuring the impression of memories, bodies, and emotion without ever fully resolving into fixed imagery.

Ada Bond

Rendered in soft gradients and eerie luminosity, these surreal paintings blend animal forms with uncanny, dreamlike distortions. A deer crowned with candles, a bound pink horse, and a spectral fawn-like creature each evoke vulnerability, restraint, and altered perception. Their unsettling clarity, set against dark voids, conjures a world at once tender and quietly disquieting.

Amida Deen

A young artist from Sierra Leone, Amida’s paintings offer a compelling fusion of abstraction and figuration. Through expressive brushwork and a rich, earthy palette, the works evoke themes of identity, heritage, and emotional resilience. The compositions, marked by layered textures and dynamic forms, invite viewers into a contemplative space that bridges personal narrative with broader cultural reflections.

Discussions On Dada, Oil on Unstretched canvas (214.5 x 248.4 cm)

This year’s graduates showed that rigorous technical training and boundary-pushing concepts don’t have to be at odds. In fact, they can be the perfect combination.

Why These Shows Matter for Emerging Artists in 2025

Graduate shows are where the careers of many leading artists begin. For young artists in 2025, they also offer a platform to speak directly to a changing art world. With more open access, digital portfolios, and a growing appetite for diverse voices, early exposure matters more than ever.

Slade and City & Guilds continue to produce artists who think globally, act locally, and reflect the complexities of modern life through powerful visual language.

Jun 4 Emerging Talent: Highlights from London’s First 2025 Student Shows