Backdrop, 2016-17

The fibreglass figure and the fashion mannequin have been used by Jones as ‘ready-made humans’ across his career. By the early 1980s these bodies returned to his practice in a definitive way, often posed on small tabletops or platforms. The large work Backdrop (2016–17) sees Jones explore the illusionistic quality of colour applied to a sculptural form set within a expressive painted canvas. Blood-red, crimson, yellow and pale green cascade down the picture surface, and over the three-dimensional female mannequin, which poses on a stool on wheels, arms swept back low. The subtle details in the piece, such as a red leather heel on one of the feet, encourge the viewer to assume their own postures in physical relationship to the work.

Speaking of this series of works Jones has said: “The thing that interested me was that I was painting a figure notionally inside the picture, putting the sculpture back into the painted surface. The figure is a ‘stand in’ for a performer.” When viewed from a distance this performer is made into a mirage, seamless against the expressive painted scene. Up close, and for different angles, the objecthood of the figure asserts itself, with thick smear of paint across its shoulders and torso. For Allen Jones, “it’s about how you see, the mechanics of perception.”