I'LL BURN THAT BRIDGE WHEN I COME TO IT
15 October, 2008 - 15 November, 2008
PRESS RELEASE
Images in my drawings behave like signposts or warning shots for the contemporary western world. Familiar media images are blended with historical scenes of war and destruction. Rendered in a frantic cartoonist style, black inked images and text are splattered onto paper. The experience is like confronting a warped diary, where I reinterpret and manipulate world events and iconic images.
The vigor and spontaneity in which the images are rendered cause figures to be distorted and events to collide with one another, this impregnates the works with a sense of both urgency and emergency. There is an impression that we are all part of a whirlpool of events, hurtling along without control.
The titles of the works such as ‘Surge til the End’ and ‘Breaking Laws’ reinforces this apparent lack of control over events in the world, events which the viewer is forced to wrestle with.
Locust Jones 2008
"Locusts don't tend to bring good news. The artist Locust Jones is no exception. ...Jones tackles the big picture head on; his epic drawing is a tortured condensation of everything that is wrong with the world. Climate change and war morph together in his huge dark inky blobs, a toxic blend of apocalyptic mushroom clouds and the ghosts of old growth forests..."
Tracey Clement – Sydney Morning Herald
“A recent newspaper article described Locust Jones’ manic ink drawings as expressionistic and epic 21st century ‘harbingers of doom.’ An expatriate New Zealander who currently lives in Australia, Jones’ large-scale panoramas of battlefields, cityscapes and devastated natural environments draw equally from graffiti art and mural painting – with more than a hint of Dada-esque, automatist mark-making.”
From www.coca.org.nz
“...Jones is an expressionist with a refreshing sincerity and frankness, an unconstrained drive to create (albeit often drug-induced), and admirable passion for both his art and its subject."
Renée Gerlich for Salient Magazine
"I am obviously not a landscape artist"
Locust Jones
Locust’s work is held in the collections of Art Bank, University of Wollongong, University of Sydney, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade - New Zealand, Audi Bank - Beirut Lebanon, and Centre of Contemporary Arts – Christchurch New Zealand.
