Chris Jones

Chris Jones

Bundanon Unmonumental

Christopher Jones is an artist who works within, across and between painting, printmaking and collage, often incorporating the photographic image. His practice reflects an interest in the 'expanded field' of painting, where the discipline-specific characteristics of painting are dissolved and combined with those more typical of sculptural, printmaking or installation practices.

In his recent practice Jones has been concerned with establishing visual equivalents to the relationship between site, memory and the passing of time. To this he brings an interest in the "unmonumental": work characterised by small scale, rudimentary material and understatement.

Between The Hour & The Age

‘Between the Hour & the Age’ resulted in two related bodies of small-scale paintings and photomontages made as models for the visualisation of memorial trace in response to Hill End, New South Wales, Australia.

Hill End became one of the busiest and most prosperous inland towns in Australia between 1850-70 due to significant gold finds. At its height the gold-rush town had a population of over 8,000 but suffered a rapid decline once gold ran out in the 1870's. Hill End now also occupies a key position in the history of Australian visual culture due is its rediscovery as a ghost town in the late 1940's by two key figures of Australian modernism – Russell Drysdale and Donald Friend. The scarred landscape and abandoned buildings depicted in Drysdale’s work radically challenging the romanticized landscape depictions of the prevailing Heidelberg School and contributed to a clear shift in the direction of Australian painting. Now a small community of 100 people and a designated heritage site, Hill End retains the ground plan of the 1850's and well-preserved vestiges of both its gold rush history and modernist artistic legacy.

The development of the body of paintings and photomontages was focused on an intensive period of work on site following Jones' successful application to the Hill End Residency programme. Prior to the residency preparatory study of the history of Hill End informed a choices of scale, material, painting supports and equipment.

Chris Jones 1

L: Gold, 2011 R: Set, 2011

In his series of paintings, Jones employed the recurring motif of vernacular architecture to consider three kinds of memorial trace at Hill End: architectural disintegration, vestige of gold-rush history and Hill End's current position as a heritage site. Miniature, shaped metal supports in copper, gold-plate, zinc and steel were employed as supports for the oil paintings, chosen for their allusion to forms of souvenir or aide-memoir such as photographic plates, interpretive panels, postcards and early photographic window-mounts.

Chris Jones 3

Haefliger Series: 2, 1 & 4, 2011

 

Jones' series of photomontages was developed from the study of a single Hill End property dating from 1850: Haefliger's Cottage, which bears the direct imprint of two of the so named "vernacular modernists" from the 1950's, artist Jean Bellette and her husband, art critic Paul Haefliger. Photomontages, mounted on shaped steel plate, were formed from fragments of cheaply produced, standard 6" x 4" photographs of the colonial era interior, furniture, fixtures and fittings.

Concerned with the physical encounter with evidence of the past, Jones’ work is framed by discourse on the nature of the miniature and the gigantic.

Chris Jones 3

Exhibition installation, BRAG, Bathurst, NSW

For exhibition in January 2013 at BRAG, Bathurst, NSW, Australia, the works were laid out in horizontal, steel and perspex cabinets employing a typical museum form of display whereby precious objects can be inspected closely whilst a degree of physical separation is enforced. The exhibition subsequently toured to the Jean Bellette Gallery in Hill End itself with a selection of paintings also being exhibited in October 2013 at Papirbredden, Drammen, Norway.

Six of the photomontages now belong to the Hill End collection of BRAG alongside works by leading figures of Australian painting including Russell Drysdale, Brett Whiteley and Jeffrey Smart. Apparition, from the series of paintings, was shortlisted for the Marmite Prize for Painting IV, which toured to five venues in the UK in 2012/3.

Further Information

To find out more about Christopher Jones’ practice, visit: http://www.chrisjonesweb.com