Artist and curator Paul Jones graduated with a first class degree in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art followed by an MA in Sculpture from The Royal College of Art in the late nineties, going on to achieve the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award in 2004. He has participated in numerous solo and group shows both in the UK and internationally, most recently curating and participating in the group show Heterotopia Disjuncture II in London, alongside royal academician Hurvin Anderson. 

Jones’ expansive practice includes drawing, sculpture, animation and painting, creating an expansive visual ecosystem or mycelial network connected by repeated motifs, thematic threads and a consistent questioning of material and form-a network that is echoed in the modular nature of many of his works. 

Combining opposing elements such as natural and synthetic materials, the hand-crafted and computer-generated, the real and imagined, Jones seeks to subvert and disrupt, and, fundamentally, to question. Through his strange imagined landscapes and biomorphic sculpture Jones reveals either a future world parallel to our own where nature and technology merge in a dangerously delicate balance or a post-apocalyptic disaster. His choice of materials-from found objects, used envelopes and dead wood to cheap cardboard and old furniture-bring to mind the DIY nature of a world plunged into necessity while recalling the make do and mend attitude of his Jamaican father. 

An aptitude for product and furniture design in his early career informs the importance of mark-making and process in Jones’ oeuvre. He views sculpture as drawing realised in physical space and vice versa. He continually looks beyond the flat surface using sculpture, computer-aided graphics and animation to envisage the other side or ‘unseen’ face of any given form. 

Jones is heavily influenced by the science-fiction and horror genres, including the writings of H.G. Wells and films of the 1980s such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Thing and The Blob. The ideas of new technologies, space, shapeshifting and the examination of being ‘alien’ examined in these art forms, combined with a spirit of post-punk independence, pulse through Jones’ work. 

In his true contradictory style, Jones’ work is at once broad–exploring themes of humankind, technology and nature–and deeply personal, reacting to his experience as a Caribbean British artist. Without detracting from the almost infinite possibilities laid forth in Jones’ work, there is always the quiet hum of the question ‘am I an outsider?’. 

Sally Paley (23/2/2024)