Class of 2025: Goldsmiths

The next generation

Jul 31, 2025

For our final stop on our Class of 2025 MFA degree show circuit, we’re looking at Goldsmiths, the school that gave us Bridget Riley, Lucian Freud, and much of the YBA generation.

We couldn’t make the opening in person, but we asked a few select artists if we could highlight their work here and they kindly obliged.

First up, Carmen Huízar’s works in text are stunning! She reimagines the typography of drainage signs, conjuring an illusion of texture with just monochromatic paint on MDF. Paired with large wall pieces, her presentation encapsulates how she is reimagining found images to create something new.

Jonah Hoffman’s paintings are a masterclass in depth. He takes cobalt blue as a subject, looking into its material history, its ties to geopolitics and energy systems, and its role in art economies. The result is a meditation on power and pigment.

Ihsan Saad Ihsan Tahir cleverly uses acetate to construct a large-scale stained glass-esque installation. He revives the aesthetics of the art form, bringing contemporary Arab life into focus by challenging systems of representation and giving tradition a modern edge. (Wish we could have seen this in person!)

Holly Keogh paints fleeting sensory moments such as the taste of alcohol, refracted light or the roar of laughter. Her soft but charged canvases feel like memories caught midair.

Ishbel Lowther’s life-size hugging figures, depicted in beautiful muted ochres, similarly evoke memory. Nearby, a small still life of a water glass feels quiet and restrained but just as magnetic.

And finally, Tomas Spicer built a low-slung structure that recalls the visual language of graffiti. It sits at the eye level of kids in the city, evoking fences, spray paint, mischief and the thrill of getting into trouble.

Congratulations to all of this year’s graduating class. A closer look at the work of those mentioned below: