It is not quiet in Locust Jones’s studio. Rolling news coverage reverberates from every device. As he absorbs this torrent of information, Jones constantly draws, paints and sculpts. The result is work that is viscerally compulsive, like a pictorial form of automatic writing reflecting the rapid-fire immediacy of unrelenting news coverage.
The destruction of Aleppo, the US election and continuing refugee crises are events heavily referenced in Jones’s expressive imagery. Twisted bodies and desperate faces seem to merge with the deep, robust colours of complex urban landscapes. The inclusion of text lifted from headlines heavily anchors the work in reality and, in a fitting description, Jones likens his work to a “warped diary”, a way to express the anxiety many of us feel when faced with current world events.
Tactile ceramic sculptures of skulls and body parts add an acutely physical aspect to the exhibition. “The machete and axe-wielding marks, the gritty black texture of the clay and the primitive forms are ruminations of things in my immediate environment,” Jones explains. “The burnt figures are heaved out of the earth, evoking imagery of mass graves, holocausts and burial sites, connecting contemporary events with ancient histories.”
One of the most striking pieces is a huge scroll hanging from the ceiling. It spreads across the floor like a vertical panorama and displays a narrative Jones constructed over time. Like a contemporary scribe, Jones records his response to history as it unfolds before him. “All the factors making news are fodder for my drawings and paintings. Thinking about what is going on in the world is my way of making sense of it all.”
Season of Unreason
Locust Jones
Bett Gallery
13 January – 30 January
65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art is an extraordinary account of the unique art of this continent, published alongside a landmark exhibition at the Potter Museum of Art. Necessary and urgent, it tells the story of Indigenous Australian art; a new art history unlike anything we’ve seen. For Jane O’Sullivan, it’s a remarkable and must-read book.
In a new series of illustrated postcards available as a free gift with purchase only at the Art Guide Bookstore, Oslo Davis takes on classic and contemporary art terms and genres and reimagines what they could be referring to.
With so much to choose from, we’ve rounded up the major summer exhibitions in each capital city, open all summer long. Spanning Yayoi Kusama, Magritte, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, and many more.
About Face is a smart piece of marketing. The new book on portrait painting from Australia and New Zealand has a mission to change buyers’ minds about the field. But as Jane O’Sullivan discovers, any sales pitch wears thin if it’s repeated often enough, and the close attention to how portrait painting is received by the market means that other important conversations fade to the background.
Whether beloved pets or superstitious omens, animals have always existed in art. The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia’s latest exhibition is paying tribute to two of the most beloved animal figures: cats and dogs.
Developed in 2022 by Artback NT as part of Apmere Mparntwe—the Australian Ceramics Triennale— touring exhibition Clay on Country, showing now at New England Regional Art Museum, showcases the diversity of ceramics in the Central Desert.
