Rachel Jones
b.1991
lick your teeth, they so clutch, 2021.
Diptych. oil pastel, oil stick on canvas
Acquired for The Hepworth Wakefield in 2021 through a generous donation from The Roden Family and with thanks to Thaddaeus Ropac gallery.
Rachel Jones lives and works in London. Her paintings are informed by her research into the depiction of Black figures in the arts from the 18th century to the present. Through painting and abstraction, she reworks these historic representations in order to challenge how they uphold existing power structures.
lick your teeth, they so clutch is from a series of oil stick paintings called Slow Teething. They are simultaneously abstract and figurative images, evoking teeth, gums, lips, but also landscapes. The series uses motifs of mouths and teeth and symbolic and literal entry points to the interior and the self. The mouth is used for breathing and speaking, and lips and teeth can be modified and adorned as signifiers of beauty. Teeth also have violent historic associations with the Atlantic slave trade. Jones layers together these complex historical and social meanings with readings of her personal identity, just as she colourfully layers oil stick on the canvas.
