Pippy Houldsworth Gallery is very 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 one another. Heliophobia (2017) reverberates with pent-up exasperation, whilst Clumsy (2017) documents awkwardness in all its brash abundance. Above all, Fadojutimi relishes the malleability of paint and its enviable potential to communicate thoughts.

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. In the same vein, Fadojutimi delves into how our environment informs our identity, as well as the trauma of feeling displaced and not belonging to one’s surroundings; several of the works in the exhibition capture scenes of ‘familiar unfamiliarity’ where far-flung places and tropical foliage bleed in and out of abstraction. The show’s title Heliophobia, referring to an innate fear of sunlight, manifests this feeling of trepidation.

Fadojutimi received her MA from the Royal College of Art, London, where she was awarded the Hine Painting Prize 2017. She was also shortlisted this year for the Contemporary British Painting Prize and the Griffin Art Prize. Pippy Houldsworth Gallery will be taking Fadojutimi's work to The Armory Show, New York in March 2018.