Joy Gregory’s (b. 1959, United Kingdom) practice is concerned with social and political issues with reference to history and cultural differences in contemporary society. Born in the UK to Jamaican parents, she has always been fascinated by the impact of European history and colonisation on global perceptions of identity, memory, folk and traditional knowledge.
In 2002, Gregory received the NESTA Fellowship, which allowed her to research a major piece around language endangerment, the first of this series being the video piece titled Gomera, which premiered at the Sydney Biennale in May 2010. Impressions Gallery, UK, hosted the first major retrospective of her work, Lost Languages and Other Voices, detailing Joy’s career from the 1980s to the 2010s. The collection was named for two projects– Gomera and Kalahari, through which Gregory explored the relationship between landscape, language endangerment, and local knowledge. The works advocate for the cultural preservation of African indigenous languages, specifically N|u – South Africa’s oldest surviving language – which was initially declared extinct in 1974 and is spoken by an estimated twenty people.
Joy has worked in art education for almost three decades and was an Honorary Research Associate at Slade School of Art (UCL) where she developed new work for the Diaspora Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. She is the recipient of numerous awards and has exhibited all over the world showing in many festivals and biennales. Her work is featured in the collections of the UK Arts Council; Victoria and Albert Museum; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia; and Yale British Art Collection. She currently lives and works in London where she teaches Fine Art Photography at Camberwell School of Art, University of the Arts London.