Viewing Rachel Jones: say cheeeeese

Since she graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2019, art world darling Rachel Jones has gone from strength to strength. In 2021 she featured in Hayward Gallery’s celebrated Mixing It Up exhibition and mounted her first solo show at Thaddaeus Ropac, which was described by The Art Newspaper as ‘one of the most acclaimed new painting shows in recent years.’ At auction, her work commands six-figure sums.

Now, she’s enjoying her first institutional show at Chisenhale Gallery in London. For her Chisenhale commission, Jones has used oil pastels and oil sticks to produce a new body of paintings on canvas and a series of stickers for the inner gallery walls and exterior doors. You’ll see her now-familiar motifs — teeth and mouths — reimagined to incorporate bold, hand-drawn lines over dense blocks of colour.
Jones’s clashing marks, shapes and tones prompt the viewer to contemplate what emotional responses are assigned to a colour or a form, for example, to reconsider yellow’s association with happiness. Rachel Jones is going places and this exhibition shows why.