Joy Labinjo - We Are Briefly Gorgeous
Some of my happiest memories took place in a park. Nature is rejuvenating and even the tiniest piece of green has the power to pick up my spirits. I’m clearly not alone in that regard, which is evident from a series of paintings that come from the time artist Joy Labinjo spent observing people enjoy Southwark Park’s 63 acres of lush green grass and historic London plane trees.
Kids run around. People play sport. Dogs are walked and a woman sits and reads. There’s nothing exceptional about the activities Labinjo depicts, showing people doing exactly what you’d expect people to do in a park. The beauty of these works, and what makes them so special, is Labinjo’s ability to capture tender moments of intimacy. Two friends hugging in a hammock. An elderly couple embracing. A grandmother and her granddaughter giggling uncontrollably as they lie in the grass. Maybe they’ve just seen the silliest cloud ever?
Every scene beams with smiling faces filled with calm contentment that comes from feeling safe while being with those you love. My favourite is the elderly couple snuggling close with their coffee. Their faces are brightly lit but they’re wearing coats and scarves. It’s unmistakably a winter moment and it filled me with such warmth when I saw it that I reached for my phone and texted my girlfriend that I loved her. Like all the works this one is cropped close on the people that Labinjo has picked to paint.
The scenes are based on locals she saw in the park and from around Bermondsey but the exact locations are irrelevant. What’s important is the emotion and enjoyment that she saw in their faces, although a keen Londoner might notice something else about these images: the weather hasn’t been idealised. Aside from a few images that imply a rare cloudless day, the shadows are soft and the one lone appearance of the sky shows it as grey. London’s weather might be notoriously shite but that’s partly why our 3,000 parks and green spaces are so incredibly lush.
What Labinjo has stylised, however, are the faces. Using a patchwork effect of blocky, abstracted shapes, the visual depictions of the people sit somewhere between cubism and paint-by-numbers for kids. It’s an incredibly strong technique to highlight light and shadow, but I found the impact was inconsistent with occasionally awkward perspectives. When it’s done just right you barely notice it, like the happy dog or the father and his daughter. In some instances I found it too distracting. One girl looked like she’d just been hit in the face with a frisbee.
But people watching always happens from a distance, and from across the gallery any wonky details disappear. All you see are smiles and beaming faces full of joy. Looking at these paintings is just like spotting a picnic. You hear laughter, see camaraderie, smell the food and might even get the urge to approach and ask if you can join in the fun. These frozen-in-time moments make me envious of the emotions that Labinjo depicts people having together. I am alone in the gallery but surrounded by love.
Plan your visit
‘We Are Briefly Gorgeous’ runs until 29 September.
Visit southwarkparkgalleries.org and follow @southwarkparkgalleries on Instagram for more info about the venue.
Visit joylabinjo.com and the Wikipedia page and follow @joylabinjo on Instagram for more info about the artist.
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