Top Tips for early career artists from Shaun Doyle, New Contemporaries 2025/2026 artist

Artist Shaun Doyle reflects on his time with New Contemporaries and offers advice for early career artists.

I've had a wonderful time with New Contemporaries; it's been a privilege to be involved. It was a pleasure to be in the company of people dedicated to and focussed on their art. It was interesting too to see the show as a kind of survey and to see what other people were interested in and how they articulate that interest. The activities organised by New Contemporaries that were intended to bring people together were great. I have made friends that I will be in touch with for a long time.

It is easy to think of yourself as working in isolation and to see art as something made by individuals, but the brain only really works when it’s connected to other thinking networks and so this was an opportunity to see creativity as a more collective endeavour and to be nourished through conversation with other practitioners.

I like the show at MIMA and loved how MIMA organised a tour for us that showed a whole range of things going on in the town. Taking us to a degree show, to studios above a shopping centre where people were engaged on very many levels, from those making art as a hobby to professionals, to the after-party at Auxiliary – the whole thing was very inclusive. You could feel the love and the energy of the place. This for me is what art needs. Art doesn’t need any more exclusivity, gate keepers, or detachment from the real world. It is much more than the production of luxury goods and the promotion of capitalist values. It is about connectivity, enlightenment, and love, not career, commodity, and cash. The thing we call contemporary art is an institution and any institution that engineers exclusivity will entertain an ever shrinking audience.

• Trust your gut instinct. Once you’ve decided on something, do it with total conviction.

• Know yourself and be that thing.

• Selling stuff is not important and may well compromise what you want to do. There are lots of ways of raising cash to pay bills. Merchandising your experience and commodifying your creativity will probably limit what you’re able to achieve.