LONDON.- Flowers Gallery is presenting totally, completely, and absolutely – an exhibition of self- portraits spanning the last thirty years by acclaimed British artist Lucy Jones, on view until 2 August 2025.
Recognised as one of the most distinct voices in contemporary self-portraiture, Jones’ raw and revealing self-portrayals are both personal and politically charged. Addressing themes of femininity, fragility, aging and disability in her work, she challenges societal perceptions of difference while looking inwards into her own internal dialogues.
Born with cerebral palsy, she has long confronted the way society perceives difference, challenging the assumptions that her disability defines her. Instead, using her defiant ferocity, vulnerability and wry sense of humour, she turns the attention back onto the viewer.
Once hesitant to paint herself, Jones has since embraced self-portraiture with unflinching honesty. Her expressive use of colour, bold mark-making, and distorted forms create works that are at once confrontational and tender. Shadows are prominent in her self-portraits, as seen in How did you get on this canvas? (2013) and Who is the artist round here (2012) where silhouettes become symbolic of our unconscious self – our hidden fears, emotions, and perceptions of identity when interacting with the world.
Meanwhile, The Sky Gets Inside (2005) is atmospheric of Jones’ landscape paintings with a vivid blue complexion enhanced with ruby lips. In Blind Spot (2012), the artist is seen in a scarlet sweater, her head turned with a thick grey stripe smeared across her eye. With her vision obstructed, Jones shows a somber recognition that there are unavoidably crude, painful gaps in her understanding of herself. In Unbalance: Tipping Point (2022), Jones inverts the canvas to give the impression that she has just lost her balance. Capturing a sense of precariousness, it depicts the artist at the edge of instability, surrounded by darkness, with the words ‘falling into the darkness’ faintly written within the composition.
Born in London in 1955, Lucy Jones studied at Camberwell School of Art, followed by the Royal College of Art, where she won a Rome scholarship in 1982. Her work has featured in exhibitions at Carwright Hall Gallery, Bradford Museum, Bradford; Whitechapel Gallery, London; National Portrait Gallery, London; Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh; Compton Verney, Warwickshire; Usher Gallery, Lincoln; Salisbury Cathedral; Salisbury. She exhibited at the Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester, (2019), following a commission of a portrait of Grayson Perry to celebrate the Attenborough Arts Centre’s patrons in 2017; and at Christchurch College, Oxford, (2021). In 2021 Lucy Jones won the Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Prize, and joined the panel of judges for the 2023 Self Portrait Prize.
Lucy Jones’ work is included in the collections of the Arts Council, London; the National Portrait Gallery, London; Clifford Chance, London; Deutsche Bank AG, London; Government Art Collection, London; Nordstern Collection, Cologne; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, among others. The monograph Lucy Jones: Awkward Beauty was published by Elephant in 2019, with essays by Charlotte Jansen, Tom Shakespeare, and Philip Vann.
