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Joyride, 2012
Janet Jones' new body of work, Joyride, evokes impressions of our contemporary urban world, the hybrid spaces of our globalized environment that collapse the experiential and the technological, the near and far, the real and the virtual. When experienced, these spaces become immersive, destabilizing and ecstatic.
Her process begins with taking photographs: as she roams the core of a large metropolis at dusk; from a plane window en-route at night; from a hotel window looking down at the vast urban sprawl; or along the hyper-lit passages of the Las Vegas casino strip. She then collages these images into small hand-made photo-montages, mashing the images from a diversity of places together. It is from these montages that the paintings evolve. By using oil paint to suggest shimmering gradations of light and thin layers of fluorescent colours to create chromatic glows that extend beyond the paintings onto the white gallery walls, Jones infiltrates these contemporary spaces, illuminating them. The paintings oscillate between abstraction and representation, referencing both film and photography. Both beautiful and somewhat dangerous, they elude to the present techno-sublime, the ecstatic blur of technology as we speed joyously yet precariously into the future. |
