Poppy Jones: Body & Soul

In “Time Passes,” the middle section of Virginia Woolf’s novel, To the Lighthouse, the prose tracks through the Ramsay family’s vacated summer home. The island airs survey the house, moving across its objects and worn surfaces; years go by. Nothing stirred in the drawing-room or in the dining-room or on the staircase. Only through the rusty hinges and swollen sea-moistened woodwork certain airs, detached from the body of the wind (the house was ramshackle after all) crept round corners and ventured indoors. Almost one might imagine them, as they entered the drawing-room questioning and wondering, toying with the flap of hanging wall-paper, asking, would it hang much longer, when would it fall? Then smoothly brushing the walls, they passed on musingly as if asking the red and yellow roses on the wallpaper whether they would fade, and questioning (gently, for there was time at their disposal) the torn letters in the wastepaper basket, the flowers, the books, all of which were now open to them and asking, Were they allies? Were they enemies? How long would they endure? Woolf’s writing forms both a portrait of the Ramsay family in absentia and an elegant meditation on mutability. Poppy Jones’ (b. 1985, London) new suite of works on display in “Body & Soul,” the artist’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, performs a similar tracking over clothing, books, flowers, vases, glasses, and candles. While there isn’t an overt narrative to be discerned in the 18 works, there is a sense of movement, a disembodied quality of observation that gives the selection a distinctly novelistic feel. The objects in the paintings are closely cropped, caught in sunlight, or shadowed, and often rendered by Jones in a single hue––each seeming to catch a quiet moment of interiority, away from the trials and tasks of the everyday. Pictures of clothes from the artist’s wardrobe are features of “Body & Soul.” Jones paints these images on silk, suede, or cotton, in canvases sometimes cut from her own garments. These materials are often true to the images themselves as well as being connected to her life. The jacket in Mortal Form (Autumn) is Jones’ own and is painted on suede. The surface is peppered with fingerprints and little movements of the hand; imprints implying the gestures involved in buttoning up a jacket, brushing it down, hanging it up. Jones’ painterly flourishes are indistinguishable from real signs of wear. Jones previously painted a copy of Moyra Davey’s Index Cards, (Index Cards, 2021) a book which provides a compelling precedent for her interest in the quotidian. Index Cards is composed of a series of short diary entries where Davey begins with a thought, cultural object or everyday event and gracefully connects them to other aspects of her life, ideas, photographs, and writing. Jones also offers a set of personal fragments, an abbreviated autofictional record of the culture at large. Her process is led by intuition and the paintings emerge from the artist soaking up impressions of the things that surround her and photographing them. Their photographic origin lends them a poignancy—they capture a time of day, the angle of a shadow, dust motes in a ray of light. Throughout “Body & Soul” there is a play between inside and outside and an abiding concern with points of transition; an open book, a zipped jacket, a lit candle, flowers drooping in a vase. The set offers a kind of incomplete inventory, a partial view, or a portrait of someone just out of shot, and also a lacuna for contemplation for ourselves. Together they represent what Virginia Woolf might recognise as the effort “to assemble outwardly the scattered parts of the vision within.” Calum Sutherland, 2022 Jones’ process incorporates photographs taken by the artist, mono lithography, and painting in oil and watercolor on found textiles. Often the material pictured in the work becomes the support on which the image is rendered. A solo exhibition of Jones’ work is currently on view at Mai 36 Galerie in Zurich. Jones is based in East Sussex in the UK and received an MA from the Royal College of Art in London. Jones’ work has been included in exhibitions at Jack Siebert Projects in Paris, Jason Haam in Seoul, Mrs. Gallery in New York, South Parade in London, The Artist Room in London, LVH Art in London, Galerie Mighela Shama in Geneva, and Linseed Projects in Shanghai. For more information and images, please contact the gallery at office@overduinandco.com. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10am to 5pm and by appointment.