Rachel Jones’s Sprawling Canvases Make Their Mark on London

At Hayward Gallery's group exhibition Mixing it Up: Painting Today—a who's who of Britain's emerging painters—you'd have done well not to be stopped in your tracks by the vibrant, sprawling paintings of Rachel Jones.

Her monumental, unstretched canvases comprise layered passages of competing oil stick and oil paint, with a tendency towards bold crimson backgrounds, their surfaces overlaid with scumbled gestural patterns in bright colours.

At first, they appear as somewhat chaotic collisions of ill-fitting jigsaw pieces, however it is this refusal to be resolved into any one focal point or colour scheme that gives them their beguiling and unique quality.

Luckily for London audiences, just as the Hayward exhibition closes, another one opens. This time, it is a solo show of Jones's new paintings, titled SMIIILLLLEEEE, on view at the Mayfair gallery of blue-chip Austrian dealer Thaddaeus Ropac until 5 February 2022.

It marks Jones's first solo exhibition with the powerhouse gallery since they announced their representation of the artist last year, coinciding with their autumn group show A Focus on Painting, curated by Ropac's Senior Global Director Julia Peyton-Jones, featuring Jones's works alongside those by Dona Nelson, Alvaro Barrington, and Mandy El-Sayegh.

In SMIIILLLLEEEE, Jones continues her investigation into finding visual forms for psychological or interior states. More specifically, they attempt to communicate the interiority and lived experiences of Black bodies, deploying specific colour combinations and abstracted motifs that include mouths, teeth, and flowers.

Born in 1991, Jones graduated in 2019 from the esteemed postgraduate programme at London's Royal Academy Schools, prior to which she received her undergraduate degree in painting from Glasgow School of Art.

Since then, she has fast become one of Britain's top younger painters, picked up by Ropac following a number of important milestones, including a coveted residency in 2019 at The Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, along with important group shows at institutions including the Royal Scottish Academy, the New Art Centre in Salisbury, and a two-person show with Nicholas Pope at The Sunday Painter.

Institutional acquisitions on both sides of the pond have also swiftly followed, notably including the Tate, the Arts Council Collection, and the Hepworth Wakefield in the U.K., whilst in the U.S. early museum recognition has come from the ICA Miami and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Once the show at Ropac ends in February it will, again, only be a matter of weeks before her next solo exhibition opens at London's Chisenhale Gallery.

Known for having launched the careers of many up-and-coming artists in recent decades, it seems increasingly rare for Chisenhale Gallery to show young painters, favouring video, sculpture, and installation instead.

Jones's show is, therefore, a sure sign of approval from Chisenhale Gallery's director Zoé Whitley, the influential art historian and curator who took the helm at the gallery last year, following significant curatorial roles at the Hayward Gallery and the Tate.

With this powerful momentum already behind her work, it appears Rachel Jones has a very promising future ahead. —[O]