The 2017
winner of one of the art world’s most generous awards is to launch her first
solo exhibition next month.
Joy Labinjo
was awarded the prestigious Woon Art Prize earlier this year. Jointly hosted by
Northumbria University and BALTIC Centre for
Contemporary Art, the award includes a £20,000 fellowship, including 12-months
studio space in the Woon Tai Jee studio at BALTIC 39 in Newcastle.
Labinjo’s
exhibition Belonging will open at
Morely Gallery in London in January, as part of a new programme that aims to
challenge the status quo, encouraging reflection and debate on our increasingly
complex times.
Her paintings
draw on her British-Nigerian heritage and examine the complex relationship
between identity, race and culture. In Belonging,
Labinjo invites the viewer to step into large-scale canvases saturated with
colours, patterns and people, reconfigured from her family photograph albums.
Labinjo is
the fifth winner of the Woon Art Prize, which was established by the Woon
Foundation, made up of Northumbria graduate and keen art collector Mr Wee Teng
Woon and his three brothers.
Since it’s
launch the award has attracted some of the UK’s most exciting artists,
including Holly Hendry, who took up residence in the Woon Tai Jee Studio in
2013 and, four years later, staged her first major UK institutional exhibition,
Wrot, at BALTIC. Holly was invited to become a judge for the 2017 prize.
Entries for
the 2018/19 Woon Art Prize will open in early 2018, with final year
undergraduate art students studying in the UK invited to apply. For more
information, please visit www.baltic39.com/woonprize/
Belonging runs from 11 January to 10
February 2018 at Morley Gallery, 61 Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7HT.
For more information please visit www.morleycollege.ac.uk/the-gallery
