Rachel Jones has never been busier — or more in demand. Since graduating from the Royal Academy Schools in 2019, she has gained attention from critics and collectors alike and seen her work placed in prestigious public collections around the world. Last year, she joined Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery — where she’s currently enjoying a solo show in London — and in March 2022 she has her first UK institutional show, at Chisenhale Gallery. She has already enjoyed much praise this year for her arresting work in Hayward Gallery’s Mixing It Up: Painting Today.
Jones’s art explores the interiority of Black bodies and their lived experience through textured compositions that blend figuration with abstraction. ‘I learned a lot about how to interrogate my own thoughts and feelings through my practice, in a way that I hadn’t before,’ she told Rianna Jade Parker, of her time at art school. ‘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.’
In her new body of a work, Jones investigates a sense of self as a visual, visceral experience. Look closely and you’ll see her signature mouths and teeth — a symbolic and literal entry point to the interior and the self — as well as floral forms which emerge and recede from view. These expressive, colourful abstractions pulsate with energy, stimulating what Jones describes as ‘a sensory and bodily reaction in the viewer.’ Spend as much time with these works as you can. We promise you won’t regret it.
