From Carrie Miller…
Locust Jones is best known for his monumental drawings on paper and papier-mâché globes that capture the white noise of everyday life, particularly media events, but also personal narratives, all of which are pulled together with a critical thread which provides reflective political commentary from the artist. He has used biro to render these large-scale stream of consciousness chronicles, lending them an even greater sense of immediacy, and locating them in the 24 hour news cycle and a world characterised by an endless flow of information.
Recently, Jones completed two residencies: one with William Kentridge’s print studio in Johannesburg, South Africa, the other in Hill End, NSW in collaboration with potter Lino Alvarez. These residencies have constituted a turn in Jones’s practice. Instead of working on paper, he has produced work on linocuts, etchings and ceramics. Originally a printmaker, the etchings and linocuts a return to his original practice; the ceramics are instead a new development in the way he works. He found the content for his work in the teaming streets of Johannesburg and literally etched his experiences. In Hill End he was given the opportunity to create 3D versions of his work, creating small works and a large-scale pot.
While the 3D surfaces would seem to be a break with Jones’s well-known mural-style sheets of paper, in a similar way the viewer has to walk around the work, becoming drawn into the cultural landscape and in which they are implicated.
These new works represent an important development of Jones’s practice while the work remains committed to grappling with the immediate political and cultural issues that he depicts with all their intensity and confusion.
Until May 20
Dominik Mersch Gallery, Waterloo
Pic: Locust Jones, La Luta Continua, 2013. Dry glazed ceramic, 80 x 70 x 70 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Dominik Mersch Gallery.
