Oliver Jones Divine 5 August 20 November 2016 Exhibition guide
Divine: belonging to or proceeding from a god; holy; excellent in the highest degree; wonderful; splendid. Cover image ~ Oliver Jones, Divine (detail), studio image of work in progress, 2016. photo: the artist
Oliver Jones is known for his photorealist chalk drawings, which consider how the media advertises, manipulates and exploits imagery of flesh. For his solo exhibition at The New Art Gallery Walsall, Jones has created a new large-scale multi-panel work, Divine (2016), taking the studio of the tattoo artist as its subject. Emblematic of a religious altar-piece, the triptych refers to Laocoön and His Sons, an ancient marble sculpture in the Vatican regarded as an icon of human agony, fear and suffering. The sculpture relates to a horrific tale of divine revenge and shows the Trojan priest, Laocoön, and his sons, Antiphas and Thymbraeus, being mercilessly attacked by sea serpents. The undated sculpture Laocoön and His Sons, Lonely Planet Images, courtesy of Getty Images. Photo: Izzet Keribar.
is attributed to three Rhodian sculptors (Agesander, Polydorus and Anthanodorus) and was immediately put on public display by Pope Julius II (1443-1513) following its discovery in 1506 in a vineyard in Rome. In classical mythology, Laocoön was a priest during the Trojan War, a legendary 10-year conflict between the early Greeks and the people of the ancient city of Troy. The war finally ended when the Greeks pretended to withdraw, leaving behind them a large wooden horse with a raiding party concealed inside. Laocoön was killed, along with his sons, after warning the Trojans against accepting the wooden horse and attempting to expose the ruse of the Greeks by striking the horse with a spear. The Trojans considered Laocoön s punishment as a sign that he had displeased the God whom he served (Apollo) and believed that it showed the wooden horse was a sacred offering, so they wheeled it into the city. Once the horse was inside Troy, the hidden Greeks opened the gates to their comrades, who destroyed the city, resulting in a Greek victory. In Jones s three figure composition, Laocoön s sons are replaced by models drawn from the tattoo industry, who, in helping to realise the sitter s vision of perfection, become entangled in his suffering. Like the sea serpent that inflicts senseless pain by strangulation upon Laocoön s innocent sons, the coil of the inker s pen represents preventable agony but also the conduit through which the tattoo artists express their own skill and spirituality. For Jones, there is a striking parallel between the suffering of the innocents present in Laocoön and His Sons, and the angst and anguish that individuals commit to when undergoing body modification in their quest to achieve a customised vision of perfection. In delivering ever more extreme procedures such as eyeball tattooing and silicone facial implants, which are performed outside of a medical context, the bodymod artist becomes entwined in the near impossible pursuit of translating a vision of perfection, which is not of their creation. For Jones, there is an inevitable slippage between the vision of the sitter and the interpretation of the inker, whose work inescapably reflects personal experience and individuality and, in this instance, a strong spiritual motivation. Through the work, the artist prompts questions about the psychology of body modification, the relationship between inker and sitter, and the role of extreme procedures in the attainment of physical perfection. The title, Divine, refers to the name of the tattoo studio where the image is set (Divine Canvas), and is suggestive of the role of extreme procedures in enabling individuals to achieve a more godly perfection. The sound of the tattoo artist s needle resonates in the space. The somewhat unsettling buzz serves to break the intense
Oliver Jones, Divine (detail), studio image of work in progress, 2016. photo: the artist and perhaps haunting silence that one encounters when entering a large religious building such as a church or cathedral. A sense of the atmosphere and intimacy of visiting an altar-piece is present within the exhibition, where Jones s triptych looms high in an otherwise empty space, commanding our gaze. Neon is a motif of the tattoo industry, often used for signage as well as inside the studio. Here, the handdrawn neon strips and torch beams illuminate and accent the darkened environment, while individual lights focused on the surface of the panels serve to explode the flat colour like shafts of natural light illuminating an altar-piece. Over forty boxes of black chalk pastels were used to build intense layers of black across each of the panels, heightening the darkness of the exhibition environment. To research the commission, Jones engaged with tattoo collectors and talked first-hand with those embedded in the industry of advertising and marketing body modification to a growing audience of collectors. In preparation for the commission, Jones attended the longest established UK tattoo show, Manchester Tattoo Convention, and also met with Britain s most tattooed person, King of Inkland King Body Art The Extreme Ink-ite, a man from Birmingham formerly known as Mathew Whelan before changing his name by deed poll in
Early compositional study using the artist as model. Photo: the artist 2009. Mr Body Art has reputedly spent 40,000 on tattoos to be the person [he] wants to be, going to extreme lengths to perfect his body canvas, including having his nipples cut off, inking his eyeballs, scarification (facial branding), and having a three-dimensional silicone skull implanted in his chest. His story became popularised in 2015, when he appeared on the Channel 5 television programme, 2000 Tattoos, 40 Piercings and a Pickled Ear. A visit to Divine Canvas, a bespoke tattoo studio in London, brought the artist into contact with two respected tattoo artists, who provided an alternative perspective on body modification and presented as suitable models for the piece. To date, Jones s chalk drawings have focused on a single subject; usually the human face. The artist s process always begins with taking a photograph of the subject of his work, which is then used as a resource image for development into a drawing. With Divine, the artist initially pieced together a three figure composition using three photographs of himself as the subject. This image was critical to the translation of his concept into reality, enabling him to check the feasibility of a three model image with props and recruit the models who appear in the final work. The central figure, an artist s life model, was selected for his classically sculpted body, while Jones was drawn to the tattoo artists as divided figures: embroiled in the pain and suffering of others but ultimately engaged, through their art, in a purer, spiritual
pursuit. A one-off sitting with all of the models inside Divine Canvas provided a resource photograph for the drawing, which Jones later edited in Photoshop to create his desired image. Often mistaken as paintings on canvas, the artist s images are, in fact, hand-drawn directly onto brown paper, which is first stretched across a wooden framework. Due to the size of this work, Jones created a grid on the blank canvas, onto which a rudimentary outline was drawn before layers of chalk pastel were laid down, blended and refined over a 12-month period. Divine has been specially commissioned by The New Art Gallery Walsall and was developed in response to the Floor 4 architecture. Artist s studio. Photo: Zoë Lippett Zoë Lippett Exhibitions and Artists Projects Curator The New Art Gallery Walsall Artist s studio. Photo: the artist
Oliver Jones was born in Shropshire in 1985 and works from his studio in Birmingham. In 2014 he presented Love the Skin You re In, his first North American solo show at GUSFORD los angeles, and was shortlisted for the Young Masters Art Prize. His work continues to be shown nationally and internationally and is included in notable collections in Los Angeles, Frankfurt and Istanbul. In 2015, the artist was shortlisted for the prestigious John Ruskin Prize. Oliver Jones in his studio. Photo: Zoë Lippett In conversation Saturday 15 October 2016, 2pm Join the artist and Curator, Zoë Lippett, for a talk about the exhibition. Free, all welcome. Credits The artist would like to thank the following for their help with researching and realising Divine: Siôn Smith, Editor of Skin Deep magazine; Divine Canvas (divine-canvas.com); Touka Voodoo (toukavoodoo.com); Native Child; Peter Bridgens; King of Inkland King of Body Art the Extreme Ink-ite; Ink Crazy Tattoo (inkcrazy.co.uk); Adorn Body Art Gallery (adorn-studio.co.uk). A large print version of this guide is available on request. The New Art Gallery Walsall Gallery Square Walsall WS2 8LG 01922 654400 thenewartgallerywalsall.org.uk