Joy Labinjo | We Are Briefly Gorgeous

For Southwark Park Galleries’ 40th anniversary programme, British-Nigerian painter Joy Labinjo will present a new body of work that celebrates our 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 spending time there. 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, Southwark Council Culture Together Fund and OMNI.