newcontemporaries was established in 1949 to provide a platform for British art students and recent graduates to exhibit their work professionally and over the decades has helped launch the careers of almost every major contemporary British artist, including names such as Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili, Mike Nelson and Jane and Louise Wilson.  Hosted traditionally in either Manchester or Liverpool before moving to a London exhibition, it this year returns to the ICA, its home for twenty-five years between 1964 - 1989.

Mexican artist Gabriel Kuri, 2008 Turner Prize-winner Mark Leckey and painter Dawn Mellor, a former S&M cabaret performer and painter of grotesque celebrity portraits, form the panel of judges who have chosen this year's 49 artists from the diverse selection of British art schools who can claim their place among the great and the good (and worse) of post-war British art.

Amongst the them is Lebanese artist Caline Aoun from the Royal Academy, who uses inkjet printers and everyday materials such cardboard tubes, Somerset paper and the old Pink'un to make colourful wall drawings and sculptures that tackle the mechanics of how images are created nowadays.  Or there's Nathan Barlex from the Royal College of Art, whose gloopy paintings are layered so thickly with oils, resins and bees wax that the images appear as psychedelic mutant forms melting from the canvas.

From the Slade School of Fine Art there is Ed Atkins, filmmaker and writer of unrealised screenplays.  Goldsmiths gives us filmmaker (and former director of tank.tv) Laure Prouvost, who recently exhibited her video IT, HEAT, HIT - a frantic video-montage of storytelling, pictures and films of everyday events such as a frog swimming in a pond - at Tate Britain. And we even have sculptor and performance artist Pablo Wendel, who caused a media furore in 2006 when he dressed up as a terracotta warrior and joined the clay army in China's ancient capital Xian - until he was discovered and dragged away by the authorities. Wendel once again caught the attention of the press this summer when he squatted in a derelict Battersea fish and chip shop for his Royal College of Art degree show, only to have the staircase into his installation dismantled by staff on health and safety grounds.  In addition to the venue exhibitions, this year sees a record number of exhibiting artists working in film and video, and a curated selection will be screened on tank.tv in December.

Marissa Cox

Bloomberg newcontemporaries 2010 was at A Foundation, Liverpool, from 18 September - 15 November and is at ICA, London, between 24 November - 16 January, 2011.

images: still from A Thousand Centuries of Death, Ed Atkins (2009), courtesy the artist.  still from Rain Translation, Jessica Harris (2009), courtesy the artist.  still from In Ictu Oculi, Greta Alfaro (2009), courtesy the artist.

Because In Free Fall, Hito Steyerl's first major solo exhibition in London, is long overdue.  The German artist has been one of the most prolific video artists, filmmakers, theorists, authors, journalists and professors working in international contemporary visual art today - in this respect, 'polymath' might be a better term than, simply, 'artist'.  She is a student of cinematography in institutes from Tokyo to Munich and holds a PhD in Philosophy.  Her works tend to deal with migration, cultural globalisation, feminism and contemporary political thought but she has that rare quality in an artist - she makes the viewer feel smart.  She will give you a string from which you can fly your own kite.

The exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery, East London, includes a series of new film works commissioned by the gallery; Picture This, Bristol and Collective, Ediburgh.  Before the Crash, Crash and After the Crash use the metaphor of an aeroplane junkyard in the Californian desert as a device to tell Steyerl's story of the current economic climate.

Steyerl knows what people want, and like an increasing number of young video artists following in her wake, she presents us with pop provocations.  Using montage and reportage, appropriated imagery and reconstruction, she analyses the present using signs and brands that are part of our day-to-day (Western) culture but she is no post-modern standard-bearer.  She is an artist-essayist, more in common with a history of post-structural philosophers, those men and women who made it their life to analyse and deconstruct the building blocks of aesthetics and social culture.  The aeroplane, in fact, that is at the heart of Steyerl's new works is a perfect symbol: A Boeing 4X-JYI.  Bought in the 1940s by film director Howard Hughes, the 'plane was subsequently flown as a part of the Israeli Air Force, before being decommissioned and blown up for the Keanu Reeves/Sandra Bullock vehicle (pun very much intended) Speed.

Steyerl recognises the sometimes futile efforts made by certain movements of people, for political purposes or otherwise, but it is the explosive, and sometimes wildly inappropriate, combinations that she presents that get us excited.

Hito Steyerl is at Chisenhale Gallery, 64 Chisenhale Road, London E3 5QZ between 4 November - 19 December.

image: still from In Free Fall (2010), Hito Steyerl, courtesy of Chisenhale Gallery.