The Thousands

Gemma Jones is a quiet but prolific achiever. In between curating, selling, facilitating and writing about art she has somehow made the time to create some of her own. In Bright Signs, Gemma combines bold but surprisingly affecting slogans and iconically rendered female faces in her paintings of pennants – in a broad, bright and varied palette. The result is either a celebration of or a commiseration about femininity in popular culture, depending which way you look at it.

At first the work seems trivial; vibrant paintings of flags emblazoned with pretty girls and two-word catchphrases such as “hanky panky” and “secret crush.” As you take in the whole collection, however, you’ll start to catch on to the subversion and cynicism inherent in the pop art movement. Gemma has taken her personal paranoia, condensed it into the language of commercial celebration and run it up the flagpole for all to see.

Jones is bit of a workaholic. “I have  a day job, I work at Outré Gallery and help curate that.”  You know, that pop art institution on Elizabeth Street? “I run a thing called the Kaotic Kraft Kuties, I’ve done a few other collaborations, like with my friend Lauren Brown we do Candy Stripers so that’s sort of a bit more of an abstract art process and I’m a painter as well.” She forgets to mention that she’s been writing for The Vine for years and is a self professed social butterfly. When she’s not busy taking care of all of the above she’s out go-go dancing at Sweet Jelly Roll or visiting around town in her trademark blue Volkswagen beetle.

Gemma doesn’t let work get in the way of her practice nor does she allow the reverse. “I think that on a subconscious level they are always feeding each other. I would hate to get into a realm of conflict of interest. I would hate to be seen to be exploiting my position in order to push my own product. I don’t think that I want to be the one selling my art either. You know, I don’t want to be working in the gallery and talking about myself in the third person.”

Being so embedded in commercial art peddling as well as creating her own art and craft one might wonder where Jones draws the lines between high art, commercial art and craft. “I don’t see much of a line between art and craft. I think all art needs to have a well crafted element and I think people would be very surprised to find how much meaning is imbued in even basic craft. There is a lot of meaning and history and symbolic power in a lot of the crafts that get made. You know I don’t think that we need to be ashamed of selling art and craft; I think it often is imbued with the type of value that should be remunerated but I don’t always think that that is the number one thing. So I like to mix it up a little.”

Gemma has been preparing for Bright Signs for the last year or so, painting casually, only to ramp up her efforts over the last four months culminating in a whole month off work immediately preceding the exhibition.

“I guess this is an evolution from some of the other paintings I have done. Even though they are quite simple striking works, I think there are a lot of layered ideas that come from the world of design or the world of craft and my own paranoias. A lot of what this work is about, is taking your own thoughts, taking your own private moments and what happens if you write it in a language of pop art. What happens if you use the language of public display.”

“There are certain types of things that we are conditioned to celebrate and what happens if you celebrate other types of things, or what if you use that language to think about other minor things that are less spoken about?”

“I’m definitely not afraid to talk about feminism or being a feminist. It becomes a sort of invented nostalgia for a type of woman or reflects on not just the way we think about ourselves but the way we think about how other people think we might think about ourselves. It’s layered ideas about how we are represented in the world – and hopefully challenging that a bit and remaking it.”

What’s next for Gemma Jones? Putting her feet up? Think again. “I’m always thinking about the next thing. I think I’m going to try and learn some new print making skills, try to do something that’s just about learning a craft rather than thinking about it too much in conceptual ways.”