Joy Labinjo is significantly one of the most exciting, early career British artists, contributing to contemporary painting through a unique visual language that reflects her diasporic perspective. This publication tracks her evolution to date, and during the closing weeks of her institutional solo show: Joy Labinjo: We Are Briefly Gorgeous, Southwark Park Galleries, London, features an introduction by Dr. Christine Checinska, Senior Curator of Africa and Diaspora Textiles and Fashion, V&A, London; the essay, Joy Labinjo: Rethinking Body Politics in Painting, by Dr Jareh Das, Independent Curator and writer; and In Conversation: Good Trouble, with Curator, Adelaide Bannerman, Curatorial Director at Tiwani Contemporary, exploring Labinjo’s practice. Drawing on personal encounters with the artist and her work, each contributor reflects on Labinjo’s ability to make visible stories that offer insights that have the potential to move us beyond ourselves.
Dr Christine Checinska:
“For British painter Joy Labinjo figuration provides a way to think through the social, cultural, and political contexts that shape her everyday life, to meditate on the histories connected to her ancestry as she uncovers them, and to reflect on herself as she comes into her own as a woman and as an artist… To look closely at her oeuvre from then to now is to witness an artist who delights in the act of painting, constantly finessing her skill as she discovers the power of what can be expressed via paint, paste and canvas – the shift from the playfulness and imperfections of the early works…to satirical paintings that question race and racism, colonialism and whiteness, and through to the monumental renderings of her own naked body… To trace the conceptual underpinnings and materiality of her practice from then to now is to observe her flourishing.”
Edited by Adelaide Bannerman, Martina Mei and Matt Price, produced by Hurtwood and published by Tiwani Contemporary and Anomie Publishing, London. The book has been generously supported by the A G Leventis Foundation.
Title: Joy Labinjo | Binding: Hardback | Height (mm): 245 | Width (mm): 270
Number of pages: 192 | Subject: Modern and Contemporary Art, Art and Culture | Language: English | ISBN: 978-1-910221-63-1
