The large works burst with colour
When I saw the artist was a working-class black woman, born in Whitechapel and striving to be known in the art world, I recognised a struggle and felt an instant kinship, writes Michael Holland.
Already she has broken through many ceilings to get this exhibition, the first solo show by a contemporary artist in the main space at Dulwich Picture Gallery, and as had to stay grounded after finding fame so soon after art school.
Jones has done that by keeping a connection to Black figures in art, continuing her lips and mouth motifs and making the art that she wants on material that she wants in a shape that she decides. So in Gated Canyons there are paintings on linen or canvas with 90° angles, and others on harder materials with unconventional shapes.
The exhibition has been put together by Jane Findlay and the art is a response to Peter Boel’s Head of a Hound – a painting that has hung in the DPG for many years – and includes several newly commissioned works.
The large works seemingly burst with colour when you first encounter them but strangely feel quite muted, with swathes of brown linen left untouched. In their abstractness they depict rows of teeth like rocks at the bottom of a canyon, or bricks in broken rows. Seemingly unfinished, the paintings leave the viewer to fill in the gaps.
The artist says, ‘The repetition of a mouth filled with teeth is how I play with, subdue, elevate or put meaning and content into ideas around representations of self and Blackness. It’s both specific and very general. Using a work from the Collection (Head of a Hound) as a prompt for these works has significantly deepened my relationship to the history of images, their context and the narratives created around them.’
Gated Canyons can both confuse or open your eyes and mind to what Jones wants her art to achieve.
Dulwich Picture Gallery until 19th October.
Booking and full details: https://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/
