Light Moment, 2026

Coming of age during the cultural shifts of the 1960s, where he emerged as a central protagonist in British Pop, Jones has maintained a distinctive compulsion in depicting the body. Focusing on questions of visual perception, sexuality, and performance, his practice draws on fashion, advertising and cinema.

A theme of theatricality unites a new series of powerful paintings, featuring shaped curves that accentuate spotlights and curtains. The shaped canvas underlines its objectivity, countering the pictorial illusion upon it. The picture is not the record of an event but is the event. As Jones described in October 2026, for him “visualising performance on stage is itself a performance on canvas – both are a record of creative invention”

Figures dance across canvases, their bodies fragmented and shifting while audiences watch on from balconies. Rendered in a saturated palette of green, yellow, and red, the paintings transport the viewer to an intoxicating, dreamlike space. In Light Moment (2026) dance partners on stage are depicted in a blur of action, their legs interlinked and almost becoming one, a motif also seen in recent painting Bend the Knee (2024–25). A female audience member in a box looks on, with eyes closed and a delicately posed hand, in a seeming state of reverie.