Graduation Show: Emerging Talent from Slade Art School Graduates 2025

This year’s Slade School of Fine Art graduation show is a vibrant showcase of emerging talent. With a range of media, themes, and techniques on display, the class of 2025 proves that the next generation of artists is both fearless and deeply expressive.

Below, we highlight three art school graduates whose work stood out for its originality, emotional power, and technical range.

Jameela Stenheden Gordon-King: Drawing the Body Into Being

Jameela Stenheden Gordon-King’s practice fuses figuration with an urgent physicality. Her large-scale charcoal works, created directly onto walls and paper, feel less like drawings and more like traces of performance.

In one standout piece, a contorted female figure sprawls across a vast sheet. The marks are bold and unfiltered, like gestures pulled from the body itself. The tension between softness and violence is ever-present.

Her contribution to the graduation show reveals an artist who is unafraid to work big—both in scale and in emotion.

Mengmeng Zhang: Smoky Abstraction and Shadowed Figures

If Gordon-King’s work is visceral, Mengmeng Zhang ’s is haunting. Her abstract paintings combine sweeping brushstrokes with delicate, ghostlike figures. One piece, in pinks and purples, suggests a body in motion—sweeping or perhaps dissolving.

Another, in moody greens and blues, shows a small feminine figure held by a shadowy presence. The larger form clutches what could be a knife. But nothing is fully literal here—Zhang seems to play with emotion more than narrative.

Her style is smoky, almost vaporous. Viewers are drawn in slowly. The images unfold as whispers rather than shouts. As part of this year’s graduation show, Zhang’s work offers a quieter, deeply psychological counterpoint to the louder pieces on display. This is emerging talent that speaks with restraint and power in equal measure.

Lucy XC Liu: Silk, Steel, and the Poetics of Resistance

Lucy XC Liu’s floor-to-ceiling installation was one of the most visually arresting works in the exhibition. Long, hand-dyed silks floated toward the room’s incredibly high ceiling. But they were interrupted—pierced, held back—by sharp oil-painted metal spikes.

“The silks are dreamy,” Liu explains. “They fly towards the ceiling, yet they are anchored, pierced, pulled back by oil-painted metal spikes… so they don’t hurt others.”

Her work occupies a space between softness and resistance. It is poetic but never passive. The balance of vulnerability and control is delicate and deeply felt.

Liu’s contribution adds an immersive, sculptural element to the show. As an art school graduate, she demonstrates a rare understanding of both materials and metaphor. You don't just view her work—you move through it, and it moves with you.

Why These Art School Graduates Matter

Slade’s graduation show has long been a launchpad for significant emerging talent. These three artists are examples of what makes this show essential viewing: risk, originality, and deep emotional intelligence.

For collectors, curators, and anyone following the future of contemporary art, these art school graduates offer compelling proof that Slade continues to shape bold, relevant, and resonant voices.

Visit the full Slade Graduation Show 2025 online.