Then, Now and Next?

Working across painting, drawing, sculpture and collage, Gabrielle Jones explores notions of drama, excess, balance and embellishment. Her works combine intuitive mark-making with distinct nods to art history, high-lighting movement and time through expressive forms and colours, iconic patterns and textures, and layers of paint, all delivered with an unashamedly feminine mien.

Drawn by the theatre, movement and storytelling of Baroque and Rococo art in particular, Jones borrows their patterns, décor and adornments in an abstract conflation of drama and courtly accoutrements, combined with mashed-up memory of works by artists influential on her practice (especially Vuillard, Vermeer, Bacon and Franz Kline)

The resulting work is both a celebration of beauty and a post-modern, antipodean, amused comment on the courtly rituals, manners and pervasive sense of importance and entitlement of protagonists and subjects of much of the artistic canon, here contrasted with the loose, abstract, free forms and rules of contemporary life.

Jones is hyper aware of the materiality of media she uses. Paintings are worked in both Acrylic and Oil (sometimes together) as well as drawn on paper and made into constructions in Ink and Watercolour. The ability to paint “Alla Prima” (wet on wet) underlies most of her work and suits an expressive, intuitive style where thought can turn into action immediately, and the brushstrokes, process and decisions of painting can be read on the poly cotton surface more easily, tracking the history of making the works.

This exhibition sees the first paper sculptures by the artist. The colourful, patterned paper elements have been sourced from on-line behemoths such as Temu and Ali Express. Jones comments on the excess in transporting frivolous paper goods the approximately 8,000kms from China to her home in Sunshine Coast. They are all fragile, readily available in discount stores and often single-use items used to celebrate events that mark the passing of time (New Year, Birthdays etc).

In this installation, Jones re-imagines the items to be dramatic, important, and long lasting. The artist has embellished metal, Ab Ex organic forms by wrapping them in excess Op Shop clothing - sourced locally. The inherent textile patterns combined with the paper adornments are used in a deliberately over-the-top display of ephemeral beauty, whilst expressing the strong sense of balance and the joy in life, that is a constant thread throughout Jones’s practice.