RACHEL JONES

(B. 1991)

Spliced Structure (7)
2019

Footnotes

Provenance
The Sunday Painter, London
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2019


A commanding and vivid canvas, Rachel Jones' Spliced Structure (7) is a masterwork that is enlivening to behold, demonstrating an exuberance and painterly confidence that intensely stitches together ideas of identity and corporeality. Across passages of fervid reds and greens, laid down with spirited flourishes of oil stick and paint, Jones' intensive strokes reveal grinning teeth that emerge from a luscious surface. One of the most highly sought-after artists to emerge in recent seasons, Spliced Structure (7) is a sterling example by an artist who continues to go from strength-to-strength, following her recent solo exhibitions at Thaddaeus Ropac in London [SMIIILLLLEEEE], and the Chisenhale Gallery [say cheeeeese] that will run until June 2022.

A graduate of the Royal Academy Schools – an institution that counts Issy Wood and Michael Armitage amongst its alumni – Jones' is one of a nascent generation of artists who have injected vigour and soul back into the painterly medium. This is resplendently clear in the present work not only in the vivacity of Jones' mark-making, but also in the ideas that underpin her practice at large. The body is Jones' primary subject, and yet the figure remains starkly absent. It becomes an abstraction, an interiority that the artist translates into an all-encompassing composition – filling and consuming the spectator's gaze. In this way, the mouth has emerged as a motif of great significance in Jones' works, pictured as the opening to an internal landscape that the artist illuminates with each gesture, kept at bay behind a grill of ivory teeth.

"I am very interested in placing my history and my relationship to painting within the work. It's really meaningful to have people interrogate those ideas and to think about them. [...] you can make artwork from a place of feeling, and that's enough of a reason to make something, because I think that's the truth of it," Jones has commented: "Anything that's produced, it comes from some sort of desire or a need, and all of those things are emotional and physical reactions in our body" (the artist in: Amah-Rose Abrams, 'Meet Rachel Jones, an Ascendant Painter Whose Jitteringly Electric Paintings Have Captivated Viewers in London and Collectors Worldwide', news.artnet.com, 3 January 2022).

Painting to Jones is a wholehearted, embodied activity, executed with feeling and intent that can only truly emerge from a reconciliation between body and psyche. To gaze upon Spliced Structure (7) is to engage with Black British womanhood, with Black joy, with the Afro-Caribbean and diasporic communities across London and the UK. It does this, however, without leaning on didacticism as a narrative method. The painting is pure experience: it is about the internal experience of its author, as that relates to the outward experience of the work's spectator.

A patchwork of scumbled paint and sketched oil stick over lucid primary colours, the present work is filled with sumptuous details and passages that draw the eye into its surface, evoking the intensity of Joan Mitchell canvases. Most recently celebrated at the Hayward Gallery exhibition Mixing It Up: Painting Today, an exhibition that placed Jones alongside Peter Doig, Jadé Fadojutimi, Lisa Brice, Somaya Critchlow, and Hurvin Anderson, amongst others, her influence and public acclaim is ever-growing. Her multimedia commission at the Chisenhale Gallery promises to further and deepen her prominence as one of the leading artistic voices today.

With works residing in the collection of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Miami; the Arts Council Collection, UK; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Tate collection, UK; and the Hepworth Wakefield, Jones is one of the most exciting and desirable artists to public institutions and private collections alike. Spliced Structure (7) is a monumental and impressive painting that captures Jones' practice at its most vibrant and ambitious.