Rachel Jones (born 1991) is a British visual artist. She has exhibited work in the UK at galleries and institutions including

Thaddaeus Ropac Thaddaeus Ropac (born 16 January 1960) is an Austrian gallerist specializing in international contemporary art. He founded the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in 1981, and represents today more than 60 artists with his galleries in Salzburg (Austria), Pari ...

, The Sunday Painter and the

Royal Scottish Academy The Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) is the country’s national academy of art. It promotes contemporary Scottish art. The Academy was founded in 1826 by eleven artists meeting in Edinburgh. Originally named the Scottish Academy, it became the ...

, and has been artist-in-residence at the Chinati Foundation (2019) and

Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art (MMOBA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to art made in and inspired by Bermuda. MMOBA was founded in 1987 by Tom Butterfield, MBE (born 1948) and has been located in the Bermuda Botanical Gardens in Paget P ...

in (2016). Her work is in collections of

The Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

Arts Council England Arts Council England is an arm's length non-departmental public body of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It is also a registered charity. It was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council of Great Britain was divided into three s ...

Hepworth Wakefield The Hepworth Wakefield is an art museum in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England, which opened on 21 May 2011. The gallery is situated on the south side of the River Calder and takes its name from artist and sculptor Barbara Hepworth who was born an ...

, the

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Build ...

, and the Institute of Contemporary Art,

Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...

Biography

Rachel Jones was born in Whitechapel, East London, and grew up in

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

. She studied at

Glasgow School of Art The Glasgow School of Art (GSA; gd, Sgoil-ealain Ghlaschu) is a higher education art school based in Glasgow, Scotland, offering undergraduate degrees, post-graduate awards (both taught and research-led), and PhDs in architecture, fine art, and ...

, earning a BA Fine Art degree in 2013, and subsequently an MA in Fine Art from the

Royal Academy Schools The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purpo ...

(2019). In a 2021 interview for ''

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'' she was quoted as saying of her time at art school: "I learned a lot about how to interrogate my own thoughts and feelings through my practice, in a way that I hadn't before. ...I was trying to centre my experience as a Black woman in a space that is predominantly white and, ultimately, not designed for me to thrive." Her work has been described by art critic Louisa Buck as patrolling "a porous line between abstraction and the figurative ... rooted in the sheer joy of abstract colour, form and gesture", and Jones explains: "The things that I was most drawn to and moved by as a younger artist, and even as a child, often tended to be by

Abstract Expressionist Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

painters. I also responded to things that were abstract in the sense that they were removed from a reality that was day-to-day. ... you can use colour and shape and form to speak to people in a way that isn't about a spoken language—it's about emotion and inciting feelings that don't have to be explained or expressed. It's responsive, it's instinctive, and a core part of all of us. So for me, it came from a place of being intrigued by these things and understanding them as a base human desire, and wanting to figure out how I could fit within that history and explore my interest in representations of Blackness." Works by Jones are held in collections of

, the

, and the Institute of Contemporary Art,

, and she was a participant in the major 2021 exhibition ''Mixing it Up: Painting Today'' at the

Hayward Gallery The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre in central London, England and part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings (the Roy ...

in London's

Southbank Centre Southbank Centre is a complex of artistic venues in London, England, on the South Bank of the River Thames (between Hungerford Bridge and Waterloo Bridge). It comprises three main performance venues (the Royal Festival Hall including the Nat ...

, where she was one of the youngest artists in the show. As one review noted: "At Hayward Gallery's group exhibition ''Mixing it Up: Painting Today''—a who's who of Britain's emerging painters—you'd have done well not to be stopped in your tracks by the vibrant, sprawling paintings of Rachel Jones. Her monumental, unstretched canvases comprise layered passages of competing oil stick and oil paint, with a tendency towards bold crimson backgrounds, their surfaces overlaid with scumbled gestural patterns in bright colours. ... she has fast become one of Britain's top younger painters." More recently, her well-received first solo show, held at the Thaddaeus Ropac gallery in London, prompted the ''

Evening Standard The ''Evening Standard'', formerly ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), also known as the ''London Evening Standard'', is a local free daily newspaper in London, England, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format. In October 2009, after be ...

'' to comment: "The 30-year-old Essex-based artist also has a

Chisenhale Gallery Chisenhale Gallery is a non-profit contemporary art gallery based in London's East End. Background The organisation focuses on a programme of commissioned exhibitions, events, performances and talks. The gallery occupies the ground level of a ...

show coming around the corner and, ahead of that, this exhibition, SMIIILLLLEEEE, in one of Europe’s biggest commercial galleries. And no wonder there's so much excitement about her: Jones is already a distinctive voice, creating ravishingly colourful works with intriguing subject matter.. ... this is hugely impressive stuff." Caroline Douglas of Contemporary Art Society said: "For her latest London exhibition, Rachel Jones brings not just paintings but words and music references to scaffold her work in the here and now. ... The sensual, as well as the symbolic, power of the mouth and teeth have become the way the artist uses to speak about her ethnicity, and her experience of being a Black woman in the world today." Her exhibition at the Chisenhale Gallery, ''say cheeeeese'', ran from 12 March to 12 June 2022. Aurella Yussuf's review in ''

Artsy Artsy, formally known as Art.sy Inc is a New York City based online art brokerage. Its main business is developing and hosting website for numerous galleries as well as selling art for them. It utilizes a search engine and database to draw conn ...

'' states: "If the primary function of Jones’s work is to express the vast spectrum of her emotions, teeth became, for the artist, evocative of so many elements of human existence, such as consumption, laughter, even violence. The mouth is both a figurative and literal opening, an entryway into the physical body—its essential functions and all the unpleasantness that it entails—as well as an avenue for speech and expression. Although not working directly from reference images, Jones's practice is informed by her exposure to visual media, nature, and her lived experiences. ... the underlying principle is that everyone has a mouth and everyone has a starting point to think about the infinite possibilities that lie within."

Exhibitions

* 2014: ''RSA: New Contemporaries 2014'',

, Edinburgh * 2018: ''Rachel Jones: Mad Dogs'', Jupiter Woods, London * 2019: ''Red Shaped Mouths'', Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas * 2019: New Art Centre, Salisbury, Wiltshire, with Gillian Ayres and Nao Matsunaga * 2020: ''Rachel Jones and Nicholas Pope'', The Sunday Painter, London * 2020: ''A Sovereign Mouth'', Gallery 12.26, Dallas, Texas * 2020: ''A Focus on Painting'', Thaddaeus Ropac, London * 2021: ''Mixing it Up: Painting Today'',

, London * 2021: ''SMIIILLLLEEEE'', Thaddaeus Ropac, London * 2022: ''say cheeeeese'', Chisenhale Gallery, London

References

External links

Official website

"Artist Profile: Rachel Jones"
Arts Council Collection, 20 October 2021. * Amah-Rose Abrams
"Meet Rachel Jones, an Ascendant Painter Whose Jitteringly Electric Paintings Have Captivated Viewers in London and Collectors Worldwide"
''

Artnet Artnet.com is an art market website. It is operated by Artnet Worldwide Corporation, which has headquarters in New York City, in the United States, and is owned by Artnet AG, a German publicly traded company based in Berlin that is listed on t ...

'', 3 January 2022. * Rachel Campbell-Johnston
"Rachel Jones: the painter who claims she can eat colour"
''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'', 8 January 2022. * Gazelle Mba
"Rachel Jones Paints a New Kind of Smile"
'' Frieze'', 8 March 2022.
"at home: Artists in Conversation , Rachel Jones"
YaleBritishArt, 13 July 2022. Via YouTube. {{DEFAULTSORT:Jones, Rachel 1991 births Living people 21st-century English women artists Alumni of the Glasgow School of Art Alumni of the Royal Academy Schools Artists from London Black British artists British contemporary artists People from Whitechapel