British-Nigerian painter Joy Labinjo presents her largest London institutional exhibition.
Tiwani Contemporary is pleased to announce Joy Labinjo's solo exhibition, We Are Briefly Gorgeous, which opens at Southwark Park Galleries on Friday 5 July. This is Labinjo's third solo institutional exhibition in the United Kingdom.
In celebration of the special occasion, Tiwani Contemporary has commissioned Joy Labinjo’s first monograph, generously supported by The A.G. Leventis Foundation, which is set to launch this Autumn.
For Southwark Park Galleries’ 40th anniversary programme, Labinjo will present a new body of work that celebrates Southwark's local community in her largest London institutional exhibition to date. Taking scenes from Southwark Park and the Bermondsey area as a starting point, the works will flow and develop from Labinjo’s visits to the park and how she saw people interacting with the surroundings as well as one another. Sourced from a combination of taken and found imagery, the paintings rely on the sense of the familiar and the hope that a wide range of people will see themselves in the works, feeling welcome to spend time with them.
Labinjo often depicts intimate moments, both real and imagined, and often based on figures appearing in family photographs, found images and historical or archival material. In the past, she has explored themes such as identity, political voice, power, Blackness, race, history, community and family and their role in contemporary experience. Her distinctive painting style presents fresh and arresting compositions of colour, pattern and motifs. Fundamentally at the heart of Labinjo’s practice is a bold interest in storytelling and, ultimately, people’s lives.
Commissioned by Southwark Park Galleries, London, and generously supported by Arts Council England, Tiwani Contemporary, London, and OMNI.
Further Information: Southwark Park Galleries