Joy Labinjo | Life is Still Life | The Women's Art Collection

Life is Still Life
16 September 2022–12 February 2023
The Women’s Art Collection
Murray Edwards College, Cambridge


Works by Joy Labinjo are included in the group exhibition Life is Still Life, an exciting selection of modern and contemporary works by women artists in the genre of still life. 
 
Throughout the history of art, still life has been denigrated and dismissed, largely because of its associations with women and the home. Despite this, still life has been the site of radical experiments with form and meaning and a way for artists to explore existential questions about life, death, gender and the self. The exhibition brings together works by 15 artists created between the 1940s and the present day in a range of mediums including painting, photography, video and ceramics. 
It features key works from The Women’s Art Collection by artists including Shani Rhys James, Margaret Thomas and Rachel Nicholson, alongside major loans from artists, galleries and private collections. These include recent works in painting and photography by contemporary artists such as Hilary Pecis, Joy Labinjo, and Sekai Machache, as well as Sam Taylor-Johnson’s iconic video work, Still Life (2001). In a newly commissioned ceramic work, Katy Stubbs deconstructs the traditional still life and transforms it into the tragic narrative of a budgerigar. 
 
The exhibition’s title, taken from Charlotte Brontë’s novel Villette (1853), speaks to the enduring significance of the genre and its ability to address broad existential questions while depicting the minutiae of everyday life.
 
The exhibition is curated by Naomi Polonsky, Assistant Curator at The Women’s Art Collection.
 
ABOUT THE WOMEN’S ART COLLECTION
 
The Women’s Art Collection is Europe’s largest collection of art by women. It includes 600 works by leading artists such as Barbara Hepworth, Paula Rego, Lubaina Himid, Faith Ringgold, Tracey Emin and Cindy Sherman. Founded in the early 1990s, the Collection challenges the underrepresentation of women artists in museums and galleries. In 2018, the Collection was granted Museum Accreditation by Arts Council England.
The Collection is displayed throughout Murray Edwards College, an iconic Brutalist building designed by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon as a manifesto for women’s education.
 
August 30, 2022