Goldsmiths - University of London

Alison Jones

Academic qualifications

MPhil/PhD Fine Art, Goldsmiths College, 2007- present
M.A. Fine Art, Goldsmiths College, 1997-9
B.A. Fine Art, Slade School of Art, 1981-6

Teaching

2008- present Lecturer in Art Practice, Department of Art, Goldsmiths College
1994-2008 Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, University of Portsmouth
2002  Visiting Tutor, MA Fine Art, Byam Shaw School of Art
2002  Visiting Tutor, BA Fine Art, Chelsea College of Art
2001 – 2002 Visiting Tutor, MA Fine Art, Goldsmiths College
2001  Visiting Tutor, MA Fine Art, Central Saint Martin’s School of Art
2001  Visiting Tutor, MA Fine Art, Byam Shaw School of Art
1999-2000  Visiting Artist, Nottingham Trent University
1993-94  Part-time Lecturer in Fine Art, University of Portsmouth
1990-93  Visiting Artist, Slade School of Art
1990-93  Part-time Lecturer in Foundation Studies, School of Art Design and Media, Portsmouth

Presentations and exhibitions

Solo Exhibitions:
2009 Grey Area Gallery, Brighton (forthcoming)
2008 ‘Subtle Abyss’, Nordisk Kunst Plattform Project Space, Brusand, Norway
1994  'New York to L.A.', Kingsgate Gallery, London
1990 Todd Gallery, London

Selected Group Exhibitions:
2008 ‘Feminista, Mista!’, AVA Gallery, UEL, London
2006  ‘Celeste Art Prize’, Truman Brewery, London
2006  ‘Episode’, West Florida Arts Centre, Miami, USA
and Leeds Metropolitan Gallery, Leeds
2005  ‘Episode’ ,Temporary Contemporary, London
2003  ‘Family Business’, Pitzhanger Manor Gallery, London
2001  ‘Moving’, Balls Pond Rd, London
2000  'The Problems of  Everyday Life', Bluecoats Gallery, Liverpool
2000  'Make Believe', Kingsgate Gallery, London
1999  'Chainstore', Trinity Buoy Wharf, London
1999  ‘Club Sandwich’, Brick Lane, London
1998  'It', Sali Ghia Gallery, London
1997  ‘Switch it off’ British Council Show, Kyoto, Japan
1989  'Idylls in '89', Todd Gallery, London
1988  'Private Lives', Todd Gallery, London
1986  'Young Contemporaries', Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester

Collections:
1999  Goldsmiths College Collection,
1989  Bankers' Trust,
1988  Leicestershire Schools Collection,
1986  Slade Collection,
1986  Granada Foundation,

Grants & awards

2008 AHRC Doctoral Award
1986  Boise Scholarship,
1986  Henry Tonks Prize,
1985  Prankerd-Jones Prize,
1985  Granada Foundation Prize, Whitworth Young Contemporaries,

Research interests

My practice explores the ongoing ‘to-be-looked-at-ness‘ and ‘being-for others‘ of femininity and examines the  fault-line between public and private spheres as a site of ideological conflict. Essentially a painter, but frustrated with the limitations – the ‘squareness’ and object character of painting on a traditional support, my practice involves figures and objects painted directly onto walls, sometimes combining them with collaged or readymade material - wall paper, furniture. The work is always made in response to its context (social, political, institutional, architectural) and is usually parasitic, depending on other elements around it for its meaning. The physical encounter between the image and an embodied spectator in socially determined space is emphasised.

The central preoccupation of my research and the subject of my PhD ‘Femininity as ongoing alienation: strategies for articulating the gender division of labour within the spaces of art’ is how women’s historical primacy in the domestic or private sphere continues to structure their relation to the public sphere. The critical foundation for feminist art practice in the 1970s, I explore this question against the terrain of contemporary gender politics in the transformed context of the neo-liberal global market-place. The personal is still critically political and I’m interested in renegotiating the art-historical account of a tension between 2 distinct and opposing aesthetic modes employed by the art of the women’s movement, which articulated the personal/private and the political/public. Objectification and commodification, the foremost problem for gender representation in debates of the 70s, are the defining features of the neo-liberal global market-place. Foregrounding these processes through representation I  explore the new subtle and deceptive configurations and contradictions arising from the demands of global capitalism where porosity between public and private occurs in phenomena from the ‘working mother’ to ‘home officing’, the outsourcing of the domestic wife role to the spread of pornography and objectification within everyday culture.

Selected publications

2007 ‘Art can, must,  change People’s Ideas’ in , ‘Gustav Metzger ‘ book published by Zacheta National Gallery of Art Warsaw and Kunsthalle Lund
2004 ‘Interview with Gustav Metzger’, Electronic Forum for the Study of the Holocaust 
2003 with Margot Bannerman 'Dreams and Conflicts, the Dictatorship of the Viewer', Venice Biennale, Socialist Review
2001 ‘Interview with Jemima Stehli’, Everything Magazine
2001 ‘Jemima Stehli’s Ingratiating Objection’, Make Magazine
1999 'Jemima Stehli: On all fours naked in high heels - a critical position?', 'Women: a cultural review'
1999 ‘Martha Rosler at Icon Gallery’, Socialist Review
1998 ‘Gustav Metzger at Oxford Mueum of Modern Art’, Socialist Review

Research and Conference Papers:
2000 ‘Playing the Prostitute - a trope of 21st Century Alienation’ Art and Philosophy Conference, University of Portsmouth
1999  ‘Hannah Wilke’s Whore Art’, Obscene Powers Conference, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton University
1999  ‘On all fours naked in high heels’ Research Paper, Sex and Art Visual Arts Research Group, Goldsmiths College, London