Art Dates is a new series of social art gallery-based events hosted by SHEAfriq, a Nottingham-based creative collective of woman creatives of African descent. SHEAfriq aims to provide a relaxed and casual environment for art lovers and non-art lovers alike to interact and engage in fruitful conversation about art, followed by a creative activity over drinks.
For this session of Art Dates, we invite you to join us for the last days of Bonington Gallery’s exhibition The Accumulation of Things (curated by Adam Murray) with Joy Labinjo, one of the exhibiting artists and Saziso Phiri from SHEAfriq. They will discuss the exploration of culture and identity through art, how race and representation came to be key themes in Joy’s work, and her highlights to date as a young award-winning artist. The conversation will be followed by a Q+A and short creative activity over light refreshments.
Joy Labinjo (born 1994) is a painter living and working in Newcastle. Joy’s paintings draw on her British-Nigerian heritage and examine the complex relationship between identity, race and culture. In 2018, Labinjo was awarded with the Woon Foundation Art Prize, considered to be one of most generous prizes in the art world.
Saziso Phiri is a cultural producer and independent curator living and working in Nottingham. In 2015 she founded The Anti Gallery, a pop-up art gallery inspired by urban culture often exhibiting and engaging art in alternative gallery environments. Saziso has been a member of SHEAfriq since 2017.
The Accumulation of Things is an exhibition curated by Adam Murray, bringing together seven artists whose work deals with shared interests of experience, circumstance and the familiar. Personal histories both real and imagined are examined through painting, photography and sculpture.