Marlborough Fine Art is to present Colour Matters, an exhibition of new sculptural works by British artist Allen Jones. Jones first showed with Marlborough Fine Art in 1971, and this marks his fourth exhibition with the gallery.
One of the most significant British artists of the last century, working from the early 1960s to the present day, Jones explores the representation of the human figure. Together, the works in this exhibition offer a new perspective on the female figure.
During the 1960s, Jones developed a stylised visual language for painting the human figure which marked a departure from 19th century artistic precepts. As the artist’s renditions became more volumetric and pneumatic, he turned to sculpture to create works that were truly three-dimensional; Jones’ sexually charged fibreglass sculptures depicting life-size images of women as furniture emerged. Since then, he has continued to make work that takes as its starting point the possibilities of the human body.
About the artist:
Born in Southampton. Studied at the Hornsey College of Art (1955-59 and 1960-61) and at the Royal College of Art (1959-60), where he became associated with the group of students around Peter Blake and R.B.Kitaj: David Hockney, Peter Phillips and Derek Boshier, reacting against abstract painting and finding inspiration in popular culture, magazines, advertising and music. Jones’ reading of Jung and Nietzsche at that time suggested to him the fusion of male and female seen in his painting ‘Hermaphrodite’, and he would combine these ideas with the collection of American sexually suggestive, illustrated publications of the 40s and 50s which he discovered on his stay in New York, 1964-65. In turn, they would give rise to his fetishistic furniture sculptures of female figures, paintings of women in rubber and exaggeratedly high heels, and their subject matter would lead him on to explore novel techniques of relief printmaking in the later 60’s. These works would encounter controversy from the growing feminist movement at that time, and have provoked accusations of misogyny.
Allen Jones: Colour Matters – Marlborough Fine Art – 25 November 2015 to 23 January 2016