Rachel Jones:

Gated Canyons

Rachel Jones,

Gated Canyons, 2024,

courtesy the artist.

Photography by Eva Herzog.

(25.5cm x 31cm)

review by Farah Maktari

Rachel Jones: Gated Canyons is Dulwich Picture Gallery’s first exhibition featuring a contemporary artist within their main galleries. The show opens a dialogue with the gallery’s collection and a new perspective through Rachel Jones’ art.

The exhibition is a portal into a sensory expression of the self, as the acidic and earthy colours of each abstract painting awakens the imagination with the vibrant forms.

Rachel Jones is a British visual artist who creates large-scale abstract paintings with striking and vibrant energy through her textures and colours, inviting the viewer to self-discover by through interpretation. In just a few years since graduating from the Royal Academy of Arts in 2019, her career has continued to skyrocket, with shows at Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, The Sunday Painter, Chisenhale Gallery, and across institutions internationally, including the Tate, ICA Miami, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Gated Canyons is an effervescent exhibition, infused with a vibrant, playful humour meeting an intimate and natural energy through its tactile surface. The exhibition comprises three rooms, all filled with large-scale canvases paired with smaller works on paper, bringing into dialogue Jones’ earlier work and pieces created specifically for the show.

In the centre room, from Dulwich’s collection, is “Head of Hound” by Pieter Boel, a piece that influenced Rachel Jones’ approach for Gated Canyons.

Pieter Boel,

Head of a Hound (c.1660-5),

oil on canvas, DPG594.

Dulwich Picture Gallery, London.

This portrait of a dog’s head has a sombre tone, with the dog’s profile looking to the side against a darkened background. Jones focused on its mouth and its duality in nature and symbolism, representing both a threat and a friend.

Gated Canyons shows the past and future aligning, both in artistic history through Dulwich’s rich collection that merges with contemporary art, and in how Jones’ vibrant artwork encourages reflection and presence.

Rachel Jones’ work is all-consuming. It brings you to the present while reminding you of the past through its natural aesthetic. Jones sources cartoons like ‘Looney Tunes’ to bring humour and express internal experience of emotions into its eternal environment, while combining the process of blending and heavily overlapping each colour that resonates a natural and earthy tone, her work has a very eclectic and sedimentary rock feel.

Through this process, the artist creates a buildup of emotion and natural sources. The movements and presence of a body are deeply felt within her practice, as she directly uses her hands on the canvas, employing oil sticks and paints, her body serving as an instrument in shaping the work.

There is a sense of looking and learning, which is evident in the way colour compositions and patterns often bring new styles. Instead of creating a single tone, she lets them coexist on the canvas, allowing shades to hold their own freedom and individuality.

One painting I was drawn to resembles a sunset, with the same title as the show.

This painting, encompassing erratic shapes, with sharp outlines of the mouth forming at the centre of two canvases, forms a horizon-like composition. As she’s progressed in her practice, Jones has utilised exposed canvas to create more breathing space within her artwork, letting colours hold their charged energy and form a movement.

Following the colour’s movements, the piece creates a trance-like effect as it morphs and twists through the gallery’s space and in the viewer’s mind, feeling and tasting the textures of her work.

Jacquemus’ Le Chiquito Vending Machine Pop-Up in London

Rachel Jones,

Gated Canyons, 2024,

courtesy the artist.

Photography by Eva Herzog.

(250cm x 360cm)

The overlapping blends of white over blues, oranges, and yellows resemble the resistance of oil and water refusing to mix. Above the mouth and teeth, a semi-circle suggests a sun and moon through the blues and red; they envelop each other and create tension between the shapes, curving into natural forms to bring the work to life. There is something otherworldly in how the landscapes of colour bring out, to settle on her work as simply beautiful or colourfully striking, which undermines the integrity of her work’s breadth of conversation.

While the elements of materials and colour are the forefront and language of Rachel Jones’ work, the symbolism of a mouth and teeth has subtly shaped the landscape of colours. The mouth reflects how we consume and understand the world around us; it’s an entry point, a part where we essentially interact and engage with the world and its materials, its history, both in its give and take.

It’s the genesis of expression, as your teeth are a sense of identity and your mouth shapes the tragedy of your life, and through this symbolism, Rachel Jones shows this tension of a pivotal point in the human experience.

Jones further explores this with new motifs of source cartoons and bricks as the exaggerated emotions of the characters dramatically affect their environment, presenting how closely interlinked we are to our world.

Rachel Jones,

Gated Canyons, 2024,

courtesy the artist.

Photography by Eva Herzog.

(250cm x 360cm)

Gated Canyons is an explosion of emotion where colour becomes a language and a body.

Rachel Jones,

Gated Canyons, 2024,

courtesy the artist.

Photography by Eva Herzog.

(250cm x 360cm)

Rachel Jones’ artistry demands presence and creates a space where the audience has a choice in how they narrate each piece. Jones brings a powerful honesty about what it means to be alive and how multifaceted the body is in experiencing the world and internal emotions and reactions towards external experiences. The movements of the colour and textures call upon something more celestial or subconsciously within us.

Rachel Jones: Gated Canyons is exhibited at the Dulwich Picture Gallery from 10th June to 19th October.