It seems as if Joy Labinjo doesn’t so much paint as carve with her brush: the Black figures she depicts on canvas often resemble sculptures hewn from rock. Known for her large-scale paintings, many of which are based on old photos from family albums, London-born Labinjo is of Nigerian heritage and has spent her career exploring the possibilities of Black figuration. Sculpture is one analogy; heat maps are another, the faces and bodies of her subjects often comprising discrete pools of colour in an immediately recognisable style. Her profile in the UK rose earlier this year, when her painting An 18th-century Family (2022) – an imaginary group portrait of the freed slave and abolitionist activist Olaudah Equiano with his family – was prominently displayed in the refurbished Fitzwilliam Museum galleries. Labinjo’s exhibition ‘We Are Briefly Gorgeous’, inspired by scenes the artist saw at Southwark Park and in the Bermondsey area, is at Southwark Park Galleries until 29 September.

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