Alison Jones

Alison Jones’ paintings are figurative physical and gestural, and are imbued with questions of feminism and criticality. Her imagery is drawn from international art and culture magazines, and she uses a range of painterly languages from expressionism through fashion illustration, cartoons and graphics.

She typically adopts a feminine outsider’s position of taking vicarious visual pleasure in others’ glamour. The work often incorporates text and extends into performances, books, installations, magazines and ‘adverts’. Her methodology involves willfully muddling the discourses of contemporary art, hagiography, Marxism, feminism and journalism, misquoting theory and getting it wrong as a deliberate strategy for exploring the ideologies of the art world.

Alison Jones has also been engaged in a long-standing collaboration with Milly Thompson which erupts now and again for a rethinking and reiteration of art, feminism, showing off, luxury, distinction and BEING HOT.

Academic qualifications

• 1986 BA Fine Art, Slade School of Art
• 1999 MFA Goldsmiths College
• 2007 – incomplete MPhil/PhD Goldsmiths College

Teaching

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

Professional projects

Alison Jones has exhibited internationally, in solo and group shows, including the following:

Moving 2001, Balls Pond Rd, London examined the parasitic relations between property developers and artists in the gentrification of East London.

Subtle Abyss 2008, solo show at Nordisk Kunst Plattform Project Project Space, Norway, invoked Lucy Lippard’s text on women artists using the body as a site of irony. This theme is elaborated in Advertising Promotion 2012 in VUOTO, an artists’ book co-edited with Milly Thompson. The solo exhibition Collection 2013 at Ha Gammle Presteburg, Norway considered ways in which visibility is connected to power.

Martha Rosler Reads Vogue 2010 Grey Area, Brighton and Evasion 2012 LGP Coventry (both with Milly Thompson) set feminism against post-feminism in the context of the neo-liberal marketplace, considering the worlds of art, fashion and high-end lifestyle through the luxury magazine, and the possibilities for performing institutional critique in f*** me shoes.

Art House 2012 also in VUOTO drew on the ideology of the female nude and the identification of women with the domestic sphere in a parody of a magazine feature on the homes of the super-rich.

Evasionista 2012 (also with Milly Thompson) was a performance of gendered labour in the marketing of contemporary art.

C21st Art-Worker 2013- 2015 Coventry and London continued this theme as a billboard of art fair booths invoking the spirit of soviet posters of women workers.

The artists book C21st Recent History the collaborations and collected works of Alison Jones and Milly Thompson was published in 2016 by LGP.

Alison Jones has been awarded the following; Boise Travelling Scholarship, Henry Tonks Prize, Granada Foundation Prize,Young Contemporaries, Prankerd-Jones Prize, AHRC doctoral award and an Elephant Trust award. Her work is held in the following public collections: Goldsmiths College Collection, Bankers' Trust, Leicestershire Schools Collection, UCL Slade Collection and the Granada Foundation.

Featured publications

• C21st Recent History, the collaborations and collected works of Alison Jones and Milly Thompson, artists book, (also downloadable as PDF), Riso-printed, LGP, 2016 ISBN 978-1-84600-0591
• C21st Art Worker (with Milly Thompson)public billboard commission 2013-15
• Collection, one person exhibition, Hå gamle prestegard, NÆRBØ, Norway
• Vuoto (with Milly Thompson) Magazine of artists projects, Edition of 1000, full colour, 128 pages, ISBN LGP, 2012, 978-1-84600-0706
• Évasion Alison Jones, Josephine Meckseper, Martha Rosler, Milly Thompson, Nicole Wermers, LGP Gallery, Coventry 2012