The Radar: Laila Majid, Leonard Baby and Nicholas Bierk

Laila Majid

London-based artist Laila Majid received her MA at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2021 before completing an MSt in Film Aesthetics at the University of Oxford in 2022. She makes still images, video and sculpture that frequently draw on the signifiers of fetishwear, such as latex, leather and plastics. Majid’s practice explores the ways in which objects, and their surfaces, hold traces of corporeal actions and encounters, often pointing to speculative bodily gestures.

Age: 27

Location: London, UK

Last dream you had: Not sure – I don’t often remember my dreams

Favourite exhibition: Recent faves include P. Staff at Serpentine Gallery, 2019; Nikita Gale at Chisenhale Gallery, 2022 and Micheal E. Smith at Modern Art, 2022

Favourite object you own: Louis Blue Newby 🙂

Favourite art-world Instagram account: @avocado_ibuprofen

Favourite movie: Cats the live-action remake, 2019

Favourite artwork: I can’t choose one! Drawing Restraint 7 by Matthew Barney, 1993; Charlotte by Steve McQueen, 2004 and Père Ubu by Dora Maar, 1936

Loves: Charli XCX, bubble tea, latex

Hates: Camping

End-of-year goals: Unbothered, moisturised, in my lane, flourishing

Leonard Baby

Leonard Baby is a New York-based painter whose work deals with femininity, androgyny, identity, and feelings of otherness. Baby borrows images from films as the basis for his compositions – the majority of his subject matter is appropriated from mid-century European cinema. His scenes are charged with a suspended drama and often allude to the fact that they are just a moment of an entire story happening outside the frame.

Age: 27

Location: Brooklyn, NY

Last dream you had: If I remember my dreams, they’re typically too dark or personal to repeat

Favourite exhibition: Kyle Dunn’s ‘Night Pictures’ pulled an emotion out of me that I’d never felt before

Favourite object you own: A Playboy magazine signed by Anna Nicole Smith

Favourite art-world Instagram account: @kylestaver 

Favourite movie: It’s impossible to choose just one, but Melancholia and The Princess Diaries are consistent companions

Favourite artwork: Self Portrait in Hell by Edvard Munch, 1903

Loves: Salt, back scratches, university swimming pools, painting, matzo ball soup, bright red, being bored, chocolate teddy bears at Fortnum and Mason, cancelled plans, Farrow & Ball Middleton Pink paint, going to the cinema alone, dancing

Hates: War, Taylor Swift

End-of-year goals: To leave New York

Nicholas Bierk

Nicholas Bierk paints intimate snapshots, transitional moments and pensive landscapes, creating dimly lit and emotive work with an almost palpable familiarity. Bierk paints with a subtle stippled technique to imbue his scenes with movement and a hazy glow. He teases us with cropped snippets into his world and relies on careful cropping to reveal only a glimpse of the full story.

Age: 38

Location: Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Last dream you had: Holding someone else’s baby and talking to my late father / orca whales

Favourite exhibition: Victor Man at Gladstone Gallery and Tracy Emin and Edvard Munch at the Royal Academy

Favourite object you own: A painting by Darby Milbrath called Angel

Favourite art-world Instagram account: @folesdog

Favourite movie: My recent favourite is Anatomy of a Fall by Justine Triet

Favourite artwork: The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio in San Luigi del Francesi

Loves: Tacos, cold plunges, playing hockey

Hates: Spilling the mineral spirits

End-of-year goals: To spend more time outside the studio