Life…still by Brooke Massender
Still Life by Alan Jones at Olsen Gallery, Sydney, 2021.
Life…still
Alan Jones' aims to take the viewer on an autobiographical journey through time and place. His latest exhibition "Still Life" is no exception.
At an initial glance, Jones' first solo exhibition exclusively featuring works of still life seems like a significant departure from his typical oeuvre. On deeper reflection, it is scarcely a surprise given the overarching environmental context of the past year. International exhibitions cancelled, studio access under question and endless days spent at home in Coogee turned his gaze to that which was immediate and domestic. House plants, garden improvements and family ephemera appear as subjects in lieu of the landscapes and portraiture Jones is renowned for. He could just as easily have called this body of work "Life…still".
Jones somehow manages to infuse relatively pedestrian subject matter (the pared-back palette and the plants are atypically "still" for Jones) with a real sense of verve. He uses colourful text as a vehicle to provide a visual contrast to the stillness, depicting the names of Netflix phenomena and songs that characterise moments of escapism during the past 12 months. After all, in 2020 with narrowing opportunities for exploring the physical world, home life was for many the sum total of "life".
What is most striking and impressive about this body of work is that it urges the viewer to look beyond the obvious. To be energised by stillness. To see possibility and opportunity in the face of challenges. To be playful with tension. To make paintings with a sense of immediacy on subject matter that has endured through the ages.
In "Still Life" Jones has mercurially captured the breath that the world needed to stop and take.
Brooke Massender
Still Life
2-19 June 2021
Olsen Gallery, Sydney, Australia
