Watch This Space, 2025-2026

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 Watch this Space (2025–26) a shirtless man with arms raised perches precariously on the edge of a viewing box, almost falling out of the composition. The stage is empty, but in the spotlight Jones paints a vivid lemon yellow sweep of thick impasto, suggesting human movement through dry ice.