RACHEL JONES

Early Years

Rachel Jones was born in 1991 in Whitechapel, London, and her family lives in Essex. She has said that she “...had always loved drawing and was good at it. It was a way of escaping”. Worried that she wouldn’t be able to make a living as an artist, she earned a scholarship for an animation course in New York City. But she quickly realised that painting was what she “needed to do”. She completed her BA in fine art at the Glasgow School of Art in 2013 and hew MA in fine art at the Royal Academy Schools in London (2019). She was included in the group exhibition Mixing It Up: Painting Today at the Hayward Gallery in London in 2021, followed by solo shows at the Chisenhale Gallery and the Long Museum in Shanghai.

Rachel Jones: Artworks

Rachel Jones’ personal interpretation of abstraction focuses on her consideration of her own identity in relation to how Black bodies have been represented in history.

With its cultural and emotional resonance, the mouth is a recurring motif in Jones’ work and a key element of her exploration of Blackness, interiority and self. Jones uses drawing as a way of looking at her subjects and ideas, then painting with oil sticks and oil pastels, blending the materials with her fingers so that rich layers of colour sit on the surface of the painting. She used to work on canvas, but her practice has evolved into the use of raw linen. Jones has said that she has spent time “trying to figure out” her visual language and her relationship to colour; she is known for bold colours, particularly red, yellow and blue, but in her 2025 Gated Canyons exhibition she pushed boundaries into acid and muted tones, bringing a quieter undertone to what is often a highly emotional practice.

• Her early works focused on how Black figures were represented in the history of art—she researched materials from the 18th and 19th centuries and explained in 2011 that “I use colour and the energy I have as a person to alleviate some of the seriousness and darkness of the subject matter because I want the paintings to be accessible and for people to engage with them.”
• The mouth first appeared in Jones’ 2019 series, Spliced Structures (which she did not put on show until her Dulwich retrospective in 2025) but became a recurring element in her work. Perhaps the most well-known example of Jones’ use of the mouth is 2021’s lick your teeth, they so clutch, one of a series called Slow Teething. These paintings combined abstract and figurative images, intertwining the teeth, lips and gums with landscapes, and using a varied colour palette and different textures to examine ideas of beauty, selfhood and also the ways teeth are associated with the Atlantic slave trade.
• In later works, she explored the symbol of bricks, and how they symbolise how we talk about socialised behaviours and how they cross over with public and private spaces.

Rachel Jones: Exhibitions

Select Solo Exhibitions and Public Commissions

• Gated Canyons, Dulwich Picture Gallery (2025)
• !!!!!, Museum of African Diaspora, San Francisco (2024)
• Hey, Maudie, St James’s Piccadilly, London (2023) (short opera)
• Red, Forged, Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg (2023)
• a shorn root, Long Museum, Shanghai (2023)
• say cheeeeese, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2022)
• SMIIILLLLEEEE, Thaddaeus Ropac, London (2021)
• Blessings Pon Blessings, Harlesden High Street, London (2021)
• A Sovereign Mouth, 12.26, Dallas (2020)
• Red Shaped Mouths, The Chinati Foundation, Marfa (2018)
• Mad Dogs, Jupiter Woods, London (2018)
• Grandmama Looking At Him, Marriott’s Way, Norfolk (2018)
• Rachel Jones: The Black In Their Face, Residence Gallery, London (2017)
• Sugar Cane Plantation, Folk, London (2014)
• Noble Eagle/Wiley Fox, 48 Virginia Court, Glasgow (2013)

Select Group Exhibitions

• Abstraction (re)creation—20 under 40, Le Consortium, Dijon (2024)
• In Praise of Black Errantry, Palazzo Pisana S Marina, Venice (2024)
• A Superlative Palette: Contemporary Black Women Artists, Harvey B Gantt Centre, North Carolina (2024)
• Life Between Islands, AGO, Ontario (2023)
• Come Home, The Tabernacle, London (2023)
• Baroque, Galerie Champ Lacombe, Biarritz (2023)
• 1983 | 2023, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg (203)
• A Living Collection, The Hepworth Wakefield (2023)
• Being In the World: The Tenth Anniversary of the Long Museum, Long Museum, Shanghai (2022)
• Black Abstractionists: From Then ‘til Now, Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas (2022)
• Put it this Way: (Re)Visions of the Hirshhorn Collection, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC (2022)
• Mixing It Up: Painting Today, Hayward Gallery, London (2021)
• Citizens of Memory, The Perimeter, London (2021)
• Drawing Biennial 2021, Drawing Room, London (2021)
• A Focus on Painting, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London (2020)
• RA Schools Show, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2019)
• After Cesaire/Modern Tropiques, Platform Southwark, London (2018)
• Premiums, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2018)
• Hands To Mouth, Fold Gallery, London (2017)
• On Fun and Friction, SWG3, Glasgow (2015)
• New Scottish Artists, The Fleming Collection, London (2014)

Further Reading

• Rachel Jones’ Instagram
• Rachel Jones’ official website
• Rachel Jones interview in the Guardian (2025)
• Interview ahead of Gated Canyons at Dulwich Picture Gallery

Rachel Jones FAQs

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