At first glance, Rachel Jones’ monumental canvases appear to be chaotic, abstract compositions marked out by gestural strokes of competing oil stick and oil paint. Yet on closer inspection, vivid imagery including abstracted teeth, mouths, and floral forms emerge and recede throughout the canvas.
On the nature of her work, Ocula Advisory explains, ‘it is this refusal to be resolved into any one focal point or colour scheme that gives them their beguiling and unique quality.’
Notably, Jones’ monumental work, lick your teeth, they so clutch (2021), included in Hayward Gallery’s Mixing it Up: Painting Today (2021) and reproduced for Harper’s Bazaar‘s 2021 Bazaar Art cover, reveals an outline of a huge row of bared teeth amongst the kaleidoscopic composition.
Her inclusion of these motifs are ‘a way to communicate ideas about the interiority of Black bodies and their lived experience’, while exploring a sense of the self, explains Jones.
While united in their crimson backdrops, the surfaces of her paintings are overlaid with an interplay of kaleidoscopic colour, with deep reds and yellows competing with cooler blues and greens. Large swathes of colour sit alongside harsh repeated strokes of oil stick, giving her canvases the effect of rich textural tapestries.
Avoiding categorisation, Jones’ practice also includes installation, sound, and performance works. Most recently, Jones participated in a collaborative work titled Blessings Pon Blessings, consisting of an installation, sound piece, and musical performances that celebrated her heritage as Black British woman.
