Jadé Fadojutimi: Heliophobia

1 Dec 2017-20 Jan 2018

Overview

Pippy Houldsworth Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new paintings by young British artist Jadé Fadojutimi, her first ever solo show.

Navigating through an emotional landscape, the paintings in the exhibition offer a window into Fadojutimi's fractured identity and quest for self-knowledge. The artist practices a cathartic relationship with paint; each work manifests a moment of questioning where frustrations and fears sit alongside moments of pleasure. Whilst Heliophobia (2017) reverberates with pent-up exasperation, Clumsy (2017) celebrates awkwardness in all its brash abundance. Fadojutimi envies the malleability of paint and its potential to communicate thoughts that evade articulation.

Fadojutimi explores how we adorn ourselves with clothes and accessories in order to construct a sense of self, with patterned stockings, bows and swatches of fabric recurring throughout the work. Outlines of objects that resonate with the artist, unbeknownst to the viewer, also feature surreptitiously within the work. In the same vein, Fadojutimi delves into how our environment informs our identity, the trauma of feeling displaced and not belonging to one's surroundings; several of the works in the exhibition, such as A Dwelling for Absence (2017) and The Misguided Thrill of Frills (2017), capture scenes of 'familiar unfamiliarity' where far-flung places and foliage bleed in and out of abstraction, manifesting the artist's desperation to distance herself from reality. These environments capture the feeling of trepidation instilled by the show's title, Heliophobia, which refers to an innate fear of sunlight and the artist's proclivity to work at night.