In 1988 a young unknown named Damien Hirst, along with fellow Goldsmiths College students and other hopefuls, masterminded a show of their works in an empty building in London’s run-down dock area. Titled “Freeze,” that exhibition has since become a legend, the seminal event that launched the careers of a whole new generation of British artists—soon dubbed “YBAs” (Young British Artists).

This new wave of art was immediately championed by British advertising mogul and art collector Charles Saatchi, who visited “Freeze,” bought a work and became the prime promoter of the YBAs. His collection, called “Sensation,” created just that when it was exhibited in London and New York, and work by Hirst in particular came to define the 1990s—just look at how his spot paintings have entered popular culture and are already being reprised by other artists.

Since then, the YBA generation has moved on. While Hirst has become a superstar, one of the few artists whose name is recognized virtually across the world, the art world’s restless gaze has turned to new schools: the Düsseldorf School of photography, the new Leipzig painters, Polish artists and now contemporary Chinese artists. Though attention may be directed elsewhere, young art continues to thrive in Britain and is commanding notice. With the current boom in contemporary art and its emphasis on the new, newer, newest thing, with a plethora of prizes, art fairs, biennales, triennials and quadrennials for visibility, the demand for young talent has never been stronger.

In response, today’s generation is working across disciplines, pushing the frontiers of art even further. One emerging trend is extremes of scale—artists making works that are either tiny or huge. Painting is undergoing one of its periodic “revivals” (as if it ever went away). An epiphenomenon is an interest in the past—appropriation of vintage photographs, for example, as exemplified by Seb Patane (Maureen Paley Gallery). Some artists are even exploring taxidermy. Scientific advances in DNA research mean that researchers are now finding new genetic evidence used for research into extinct animals—from the feathered and furred animals that the Victorians stuffed and put under glass cloches. Polly Morgan (www.pollymorgan.co.uk) and Mark Fairnington (Fred London Ltd.) are among the artists in this field. And newcomer Matt Stokes, who won the Institute of Contemporary Art’s Beck’s Futures prize last year, looked back to the 1950s with his video “Northern Soul dancing in a Dundee church.”

The problem for anyone seeking out promising newcomers in the U.K. is where to start. There are so many talented young artists and so many young galleries supporting them that it can easily become a full-time job, and indeed, a collector/dealer such as Saatchi devotes an enormous amount of time to getting in first. He still buys out whole shows, and even his gaze falling on a work is influential. But he has competitors—the Midlander Frank Cohen, for instance, or the London collector Anita Zabludowicz.

There is an element of arbitrariness in any selection, but the five young artists we have chosen to highlight in this article are all making waves. They are, if you like, the tiny tip of a great iceberg of talent, and the best way to discover others is to go to London, grab one of the many guides to contemporary art galleries, don a pair of comfortable shoes and beat the sidewalks of Bethnall Green, Hoxton, Mayfair and Whitechapel. As Leonard Woolf wrote, the journey matters, not the arrival.

Katy Moran
One of the hottest young British talents, Moran (b. 1975) makes small-scale, lush paintings, which could be figurative—or not. Does it matter? No, just take pleasure in Moran’s sensual application of creamy curls of paint, in her wonderfully subtle palette of color, in the layering of art-historical references. She was shown during the Frieze contemporary art fair in London last year, after being included in Bloomberg’s Art Futures exhibition in 2005 (one good place to seek out newcomers). Don’t count on being able to buy her work, though; her gallery, Modern Art, already has a long waiting list.