Photographer Nadine Ijewere takes over until 25 november the Huxley-Parlour art gallery with her artistic presentation “Anthesis“. This new photographic exhibition marks her first appearance on the UK art scene. Through her photographic lens, the contemporary artist captures the public’s attention in a parade of mundane images superimposing the themes of traditional fashion, street photography and studio portraiture. All in all, a sensational exhibition that is sure to have British performing arts enthusiasts talking.
Born in 1992, Nadine Ijewere studied photography at the London College of Fashion and in 2019 became the first woman of colour to grace the cover of British Vogue. This feat will also be repeated in 2021, when she appears on the cover of American Vogue. Nadine Ijewere is known for her innovative and disruptive approach to fashion photography. In her photographic art practice, she addresses the historically narrow representation of beauty within Western popular culture by reappropriating it and offering viewers a broader and more varied definition, through a proposal of photographs with alternative models.
The “Anthesis” exhibition comprises a selection of thirteen large-scale colour photographs taken over the last four years of the artist’s work. In her work, Nadine Ijewere presents the radical integration of genres while poetically constructing her personal practice. Her art is characterised by her dexterity in coaxing the photographic lens. In an intimate and sensual visual impact, Nadine Ijewere‘s works reveal her mastery of colour and her unique experimental compositional treatment.
The depth of tone and tactile effect built into the photographs is supported by the artist’s approach to maintaining an emphasis on abstraction through pattern and form. The materials used in Nadine Ijewere’s work are designed to blur the boundaries between photographic genres. She uses the tactile properties of textiles and decor to playfully create a world that highlights her personal practice of photographic art.
Nadine Ijewere‘s work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including Generation at Tate Britain in 2016, and The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art and Fashion at the Saatchi Gallery, London, in 2022. She presented her first solo exhibition, Beautiful Disruption, at C/O Berlin in 2021 and received the Innity Prize from the International Centre of Photography in 2020. In 2022, she was awarded the Royal Photographic Society Prize for Editorial, Advertising and Fashion Photography and her first monograph, Our Own Selves, was published by Prestel Publishing in 2021.
