L-O

Joy Labinjo

The Swimmers by Joy Labinjo. Courtesy of the artist and Tiwani Contemporary

Man Drinking Coffee by Joy Labinjo. Courtesy of the artist and UK Government Art Collection

The Swimmers, Oil on canvas, 2023

Inspired by found images as well as the artist’s own photographs, Labinjo’s paintings capture simple and joyous moments from everyday life. Here, three people are shown in the act of swimming in nature, something not often associated with Blackness.

Labinjo’s joyous paintings of leisure and relaxation are also political. The artist explains: ‘my work is fundamentally about my British-Nigerian heritage and what that experience means… I am political because my very existence is politicised, by extension the works are too.’

Man Drinking Coffee, Oil paint and spray paint on canvas, 2019

This is a portrait of the artist’s father. It is one in a series of paintings by the artist inspired by a family photo album.

The artist explains: ‘I started this body of work out of frustration, going to exhibitions, seeing only white figures and the same story being told. I was studying in Newcastle, where I felt isolated. Looking at my family photo album was a way for me to have access to Black people and figure out where I belong.’

Rudy Loewe

Groundwork by Rudy Loewe. Commissioned by Heart of Glass St Helens. Courtesy of the artist and VITRINE London/Basel

Groundworks, Acrylic paint on board, 2021

Loewe’s paintings are an extension of their activism, shaped by the zines and comics they made early in their career through their involvement in queer community groups.

Groundwork poses a series of questions that encourage us to think critically about society. The right-hand panel depicts a group of protestors, seemingly campaigning for different things: to save our libraries, support trans rights and for prison abolition. Groundwork makes clear these are not separate issues, but a product of the same political system we must come together to dismantle and rebuild.

Sahara Longe

Mariami by Sahara Longe. Courtesy of the artist and Timothy Taylor

Mariama, Oil paint on linen, 2022

People stand together drinking wine in this picture. Knowing looks are exchanged between them, adding a sense of tension. The painting belongs to a series of ‘party scene’ pictures, which reflect the artist’s love of people watching. They explain: ‘at parties you always see something strange, something slightly off-balance that you don’t understand. People have secrets, and no one is quite as they seem.’

Longe is a classically trained painter, who studied oil painting as a student in Florence. They paint using traditional materials, including sun-thickened linseed oil mixed with tree sap and turpentine.

Lakwena Maciver

Nothing Can Separate Us by Lakwena Maciver. Courtesy of the artist

Nothing Can Separate Us, Cotton and screenprint patchwork and appliqué, 2022

Maciver is known for her kaleidoscopic text-based paintings and public realm works. ‘Nothing can separate us’ is a recurring phrase in her work, appearing in a 2021 rooftop mural at Temple Underground station, London, as well as prints and paintings.

The artist says: ‘I made the original painting for my home just before the first COVID lockdown. The phrase, which comes from the Book of Romans, appealed to me as I was thinking about connections between people and not wanting to be separated from others, but also about a deeper, more solid connection with a higher power.’

Rene Matić

Left: Maggie and Rene III, Centre: Rene’s Jacket, Right: Rene’s Studio by Rene Matić. Presented by the Contemporary Art Society with support from Biana Roden in 2022-23. WAG 2023.23.5, WAG 2023.23.3, WAG 2023.23.2

Thank you to Hannah who just knew, made by Rene Matić. Courtesy of the artist and Arcadia Missa, London

Maggie and Rene III (2019), Rene's Jacket (2018), Rene's Studio photograph (2021), Inkjet prints

These photographs are part of Matić‘s ongoing series flags for countries that don’t exist but bodies that do. It combines portraits of the artist, their friends and family with observational shots of the world around them. This growing archive was partly inspired by the small number of photographs that exist of their father’s side of the family.

Matić often draws on imagery associated with various subcultures in their work, including skinheads, ska and punk, to reveal points of connection between Caribbean and working class-culture as well as difference.

Thank you to Hannah who just knew, Acrylic on calico and pole, 2021

This flag is inscribed with the words ‘I CHOSE THIS / AND YOU’. Its form echoes the Union Jack flags that reoccur in Matić ’s photographs, which interrogate what it means to be British today through the lens of the artist’s experiences as Black and queer. Matić says: ‘I’m very interested in flags, but they’re not very interested in me.’

The title refers to artist Hannah Black, who’s artwork Politics is displayed nearby. Black wrote the foreword to Matić’s photobook flags for countries that don’t exist but bodies that do (2021).

Zinzi Minott

Top: BLOODSOUND, Bottom: I Wanna Rule My Destiny by Zinzi Minott. Courtesy of the artist. Commissioned by Transmission, Glasgow

BLOODSOUND, Sound sculpture: speakers with acrylic and adhesive with red food colouring and glycerin, Sound work: samples, personal and public archive, political speeches, 2022

Through positioning the memory and technology of the Soundsystem within a gallery context, Minott questions the systemic frameworks which culturally flatten Black sonic technologies, valued only for its fidelity to sound and passage to pleasure, yet removing the people, history and contexts from which it came.

Minott presents the Soundsystem as a fugitive entity; a living and active agent grounded in its complex history of insurgent and resistant sonic dance practices. Forged by communal perseverance, economic endurance and the advanced phonographic technologies of Jamaica, Minott reflects on the underground movements of Caribbean sound cultures. Presenting possibility through the encounter of the vibration, she seeks to refuse the dissonances which separate the sonic from liberatory and reparative motions. Such multiplicities are encapsulated through the loud, haptic, visceral, explosive and auditory phenomena of the Soundsystem.

I Wanna Rule My Destiny, Digital print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308gsm, 2022

This print’s background is a photograph of a sugarcane field, the main crop enslaved people farmed on Caribbean plantations. Minott explains: ‘it’s a towering crop, really daunting to stand next to and I wanted to depict its scale here.’ A pathway between the canes is visible, which the artist imagines leads toward the plantation house.

The photograph is overlaid with a ‘water triangle’, a recurring motif in the artist’s work. It represents the transatlantic slave trade, so- called because of the triangular movement of people and goods between Africa, the Americas and Europe.

Bernice Mulenga

Whine Down by Bernice Mulenga. Courtesy of the artist

Whine Down, Photograph, 2018

Mulenga’s informal photographs capture the intimacy and energy of their queer community and network. Documenting and archiving this world is key to Mulenga’s practice, which aims to ensure people know and remember the lives of the queer Black community.

Some of the figures in Mulenga’s work are faceless, as here. The artist explains: ‘I might not always shoot their face but I’m still shooting parts of them. I like taking photos of details of a person – what makes them who they are.’

Solá Olúlòde

Left: A Moment To Myself, Right: You in the middle of the world by Sola Olulode. Courtesy of the artist

A Moment To Myself, Dye, batik, wax, pastel, oil pastel, charcoal and pigment on canvas, 2023

Olulode’s joyful paintings are sometimes inspired by people they know. Others are based on images from social media, films or television, or their imagination.

The artist is keen to challenge the conventions of painting in their work. Many of the techniques are borrowed from Nigerian Yoruba Adire textiles that use indigo inks and resist-dyeing techniques. Olulode says: ‘when you are a new emerging artist, you’re trying to find your own unique style… you’re always looking at how others have done it in the past, and thinking “how can I do it different?”

You in the middle of the world, Dye, indigo, batik, wax, pastel, oil pastel, pigment, charcoal and oil on canvas, 2023

Olulode’s paintings aim to address the invisibility of Black queer lives in society. The artist explains: ‘I’m painting things I want to see more of… I wasn’t witnessing enough stories of Black queer couples visibly happy and at peace, existing in the bubble of romance.’

The canvas for this painting was dyed indigo. Olulode says: ‘indigo is obviously a really old, common dye, which expands across so many different cultures… I was particularly drawn to it as a Yoruba tradition, and the tie-dying techniques that they use in Nigeria.’

Kemi Onabulé

Left: Born Family, Right: Meteor Shower by Kemi Onabulé. Courtesy of the artist and Sim Smith

Born Family, Oil paint on canvas, 2023

This majestic painting shows a beautiful and delicate family, shielded by nature in an intimate moment of togetherness.

Onabulé’s paintings are often populated by otherworldly figures that represent the idea of the everyman and connect to universal experiences. The artist says: ‘there is a huge focus in the visual arts at the moment in grounding everything in the individual experience and the specific identity of a person, but I often think this can close off the work to wider interpretation. I enjoy creating my own language of bodies and landscapes.’

Meteor Shower, Oil paint on canvas, 2023

Onabulé’s paintings explore beautiful, dream- like landscapes. Here, a glowing full moon shines down upon a gleaming lake, framed by foliage that seems to part and make way for us.

The artist has always been interested in the moon. Here, they explain; ‘I wanted to bring it forward, take it from just being in the background to a force that is affecting the characters in the world I have made. The moon holds symbolic, religious and cultural importance for so many groups of people that it has almost forced its way into the work.’