Alex Jones | Interview

SUPER ARTY ALEX

Alex Jones is an artist based in Brighton, East Sussex, who is primarily concerned with material language, exploring the relationship between the language of materials and language as material. Alex is one of our newest family members, his style ticks all of our boxes - we're so happy to have him! Read on to learn more about Alex, and even better, hit us up if you would love to funk up your plain boring walls with a piece from this talented, thoughtful artist.

• When did you fall in love with art, and realise that you wanted to be an artist?
• I have always been interested in art and creative endeavours; throughout my education my decisions were never career driven but always what placed me in a situation that allowed and supported my ability to make things. I enjoy being able to realise something and place it in a space - what I really enjoy is seeing how things function in the world.
• How has your practice changed over time?
• I studied sculpture at university and after graduating I made more object based work. It was a move to Newcastle and resulting lack of practical working space that shifted my practice. I looked for a new way to explore material properties and looked for different materials I could easily work with in my new space; this constraint drew me to work with language as a material. This development allowed a more free approach to working and embedded my systematic approach to using wordsand their resulting structures.
• Describe a real life situation that has inspired you?
• I try to distance my work from anchor points within life. My use of language is to try and reduce it’s referential meaning and use, for it to become a raw material. However, I find it interesting that we are programmed to read and understand language that forms an image based on what we read. 
• Do you paint when you’re sad or stressed?
• I don’t really get sad or stressed.
• Any new projects you can talk about?
• I am exhibiting at Galerie Tracanelli in Grenoble as part of a three person show with Naomi Nakazato and Callum Murphy. In terms of new work, I am exploring multiples of the blue frames within a single work, rather than just one frame within the piece. I am also looking at getting some frame pieces made out of steel. 
• What else do you love as much as painting?
• Music and skateboarding.
• What did you create in lockdown? How did this weird moment in our lives affect your creativity?
• I made a lot of small works on paper, pretty much all of them were blue frame pieces. It allowed me to really explore the balance and weight of the frame within the work, looking at very busy dense works and very light open pieces. I started to realise the huge possibility of this simple formal structure, it’s this period of exploration that is now informing the new multiplied larger works.
• Have you collaborated with any other artists? Do you have any artists you would like to collaborate with?
• I haven’t ever collaborated with anyone when making new work and I’m not sure if I would want to as I’m quite particular about what I make and how I make it. Saying that, I would love to sit down with Lawrence Weiner and just chat about language.
• If you could communicate one thing to an upcoming artist about being represented what would it be?
• Work hard, nothing will happen unless you make it happen.
• Name three artists you would like to be compared to...
• I’m not one for comparisons but three of my favourites are Ed Ruscha, Lawrence Weiner and Liam Gillick.
• What’s your favourite colour?
• PINK!
• How would you describe your artistic process?
• I feel like I’m building a painting rather than painting a painting. So my work tends to take on a sculptural nature.  
• How do you choose which colours to use?
• When I’m choosing colours, I’ll mix them quite quickly, I try to keep the palette fairly limited. For a couple of years I only made pink paintings, I recently started introducing yellow.
• What made you choose pink?
• Using the pink seemed to sit in a certain way, there was no psychology behind it. It came from being quite neutral. It also came from that sort of DIY language, the pink you have on plaster boards. I liked that fact as well because it made it less poetic and romantic. That made it feel structural because these are building materials. So a lot of the pinks and purples came from plaster boards.  
• What made you start using yellow? 
• The yellow came from bags of cement, they come in yellow and blue. It’s taking colour combinations from that language of construction.  
• How does your love of Skateboarding influence your work?
• I don’t know if it has an impact on the visual aspect of the work, but I think it has something to do with the way I approach my work. When you go skateboarding or you try to do a certain trick, you can either do it in a super clean way or in a slightly clunky and sloppy way but both are quite satisfying. When I’m laying things out, even if it is a little sloppy it’s still quite satisfying and the act of doing it is enjoyable and it still ends up how I want it to look.  
• In your work you seem to resist meaning, would you agree with that? 
• I think there’s so much great work out there that deals with different societal meanings and issues but I just find it’s not something I want to engage with. I don’t think I’m in a position to use the artwork that I make to comment on anything. Ultimately it’s about finding rules and systems to create things I find visually interesting. However, people do look at it and extract their own meanings from it. I find it interesting when people try to decode them.