Patrick Jones

A stick-like creature surveys an endless hexagon terrain cast in salt.

Patrick Jones (b.1964, UK) lives and works in London, UK. He graduated in 2020 from the Royal College of Art with a graduate diploma in fine art. Patrick has worked as an analytical researcher for many years having graduated from University College, London with both a PhD (Theoretical Particle Physics,1990) and BSc (Chemical Physics, 1986).

2020-2022 MA Sculpture, Royal College of Art, London, UK.

Group Exhibitions

2022, We won't' stop showing, SET, Woolwich, London, UK..

2022, Lapped Seams and Silver Linings, Standpoint Gallery, London, UK.

2021, Merzbau Pavilion, Speculations and Propositions, Merz Barn, Little Landdale, UK.

2021, First Impressions, Safe House 1 and 2, London, UK.

2021, Visionary Rumours, Online Exhibition, RCA, UK.

2020, WIP RCA 2020, Online Exhibition.

2020, Perspectives, Putney Art College, London, UK.

2019, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Menier Gallery, London, UK..

2018, Summer Foundation Show, Slade School Art, University College London, UK..

White flat yet folded canvas hangs from a frame formed of rods rebar and a rhombus-shaped metal plate.

At the root of Patrick's practice lies, what appears to be, a self-contradictory state of affairs in which the analytic cartesian order of the trained scientists stands in sharp contrast to the diffuse world of the artist who seems to resist all formal constraints. Nevertheless, the contrast between the irreconcilable extremes of form and formlessness, order and chaos, sense and nonsense is the inspiration behind much of his work. This dichotomy is just an illusion of perception in which distinct things are not separable but different points of view on endless folds.

His recent work is an abstract travelogue in which he employs not only a variety of different media, including sculpture, photography, print, text, sound and electronics but also the different disciplines of philosophy, science and literature. The travelogue explores both land and mind as it meanders through the UK, reflecting on states of collapse, both environmental and urban. At the same time, the travelogue traces a path through the mind of the artist along which he opens a dialogue, in the form of personal letters to the land artist Robert Smithson, that reflect on philosophical and scientific notions.

Patrick's practice often builds out of this notion that the fold reveals the inseparability of that which is distinct; that is, the fold acts as an ‘operative function’ which disrupts and challenges the status quo. Much of his work is underpinned by his fascination with the baroque through which he explores the social and bodily turmoil we find ourselves in. Patrick often uses mirrors to try and decentre experience by attempting to rupture perception produced, for example, when one passes through an infinity of reflections. Viewing such devices as a ‘Baroque Machine’, he invites the viewer to pass through the infinite series of reflections to explore a world of other possibilities.

Patrick’s process begins with an exploration of physical materials and their temporal properties, such as latex. His research on entanglement and the troubled colonial history of latex production is reflected in his use of latex to absorb the history of a place. Attaching fragments of cheesecloth ladened in white pigment and latex Patrick builds casts, in which elements of nature and the cast object become enmeshed. The resultant works entangle natural debris and problematic colonial histories with white pigment to reveal white walls which a not at all white.

Patrick often uses white ‘pure’ platonic forms arranged in precarious arrangements to explore the ideas of the collapse of example, modernity or our contemporary world. His work often touches upon his research into our cornucopia beliefs, ‘acts of denial’ and the refusal to face stark realities such as the climate crisis or continued damage done to the Earth's body by acts of extraction. Much of Patrick’s work involves folding actions as interior and exterior become inseparable, forever entangled. His use of problematic plastic bags to restrain platonic and geometric forms entangles the rational form on the surface of a formless structure of problematic material.

Dark metal hexagonal torus with rectangular prism at each of its sides and wave like indigo cast glass at its centre.

From Here to Babel – Mild Steel, cast glass, mirrored stainless steel, uv prints on wood (within draws)

Meander Part 1 – Sound recording 5m57s. Travelogue

Digital print of 12 mirrors in the landscape

Meandering travels, 1 - 3 – Three Digital prints, Dark Island ( Anglesey), Cathedral Cave ( Little Langdale), 'The quiet land (St. Fillans)

Meander Part 2 – Sound recording 5m15s. Travelogue

Meandering travels, 4 - 6 – Three Digital prints, Loch Earn, Isle of Skye, Littondale

Taming Infinity (Aleph) – Sound recording 3m 44s Travelogue In Taming Infinity (Aleph) childhood memories of the hexagonal towers of Caernarfon castle merge with visions of infinity.as ox-like creatures transform to the Hebrew symbol Aleph.

Hated Monuments – Sound recording 5m29s I journey to Heygate Estate

From Here to Babel is a hexagonal steel structure inspired by The Library of Babel, Jorge Luis Borge's short story in which the library forms a linguistic model of the universe. A universe composed of endless hexagonal chambers. A lost fragment of the library, the work acts as a travelogue. Four file-like draws hold images of journeys. On opening, the draws sound recordings of letters to Robert play. At the centre of the work, trapped within six adjacent mirrors, lie waves cast in glass in which the path to six sites is etched.

PDF: Meandering Travels parts 1 and 2

Twelve mirrors in hand, Meander part 1 tells of how land, sea and sky merge on the timeless mirror surfaces. As the artist drifts from the shores of Dark Island, through to Cathedral Cave and on to the 'peaceful land', the travelogue reflects on the Library of Babel as a fantastic world in which humans ceaselessly improve technologies to dominate nature. The Meander Part 2 reflects on the monstrous nature of the library, a cornucopian disaster built on linguistics. In search of a new library or universe bu

PDF: Taming Infinity

The text of Taming infinity reflects Cantor's use of the symbol Hebrew, Aleph to represent the smallest infinity when he introduced the idea of an infinity of infinities. A symbol whose entomology might be traced to the Egyptian hieroglyph to tame. How then might we tame Spinoza's absolute infinity?

PDF: Hated Monuments

A traveller reads of 10 hated London buildings and sets out to explore. Travelling on public transport to the 10 monuments Hated Monuments tell of the first to Heygate estate, a Destroyed Monument. Inspired by Smithson’s journey to Passaic the work reflects how a whole community was shattered by its needless destruction.

Medium:

Sound, digital print, glass, mild steel, electronic sensors, Arduino board, software, text.

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Various

What have we done? – Video 4m34s

Untitled (Lost Fragment) – Salt, concrete, resin, mild steel, jesmonite, wood, mirror.

Troublesome 1 , is a jesmonite pillar formed from the folds of plastic bags which remain entangled within its surface.

Troublesome 1, – Jesmonite and plastic bag

What have we done?

What have we done? is part of a series of works that takes up the land artist Robert Smithson’s rebuke of minimalism and his call for artists to explore wet and dry rather than hot and cool art.

Through dialogue with Smithson, the works form reflective responses to our environmental crisis and the collapse of modernity. The works function as a travelogue in a collapsing world through land and mind with the forlorn hope of awakening us from our state of denial of our environmental crisis.

Reflecting on our environmental crisis and the collapse of modernity, the video, What have we done? maps out a path from dry to wet world. The work reflects on the damage done by endless cornucopian attempts to dominate nature as a stick-like creature roams on the landscape.

Untitled (Lost Fragment) is a three-times scale version of From Here to Babel. At the centre lie endless tiny hexagons while a laser-cut slither of chard wood will sit on its underside. At 1.5m, the salt-covered hexagon is the same size as the hexagons on the surface of the Bolivian salt fields captured in the video What Have We Done? Resting on its side, Untitled blocks an entrance to the fractured space that might be thought of as a decaying fragment of a broken world in the space of land and mind.

Troublesome 1 records the folds of plastic shopping bags. The work is inspired by a 'Naive' realisation that when cast in jesmonite, the plastic becomes inseparably entangled within the material's surface. Trapped in the folded surface lie the remnants of torn plastic bags. Bags help litter the seas, becoming trapped in vast island-like vortices until eroded to the microparticles that threaten to permeate all living bodies.

PDF: What have we done?

The transcript of the letter narrated to Robert. in the video What have we done?

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Multimedia

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Various

Dark blue folded canvas hangs on a free-standing frame made of rebar rods and a rhombic base made of steel.

Dark Mist 4 – UV print, acrylic, staples on canvas, rebar and mild steel.

Dark Mist fights to resist framing seeking to occupy the space between 2d and 3d to form, in true Baroque style, a relief that refuses to conform to the constraint of a frame or the wall. The endless folds of a canvas form a dark ground. A landscape through which light emerges within its interstices. Black pigment on the monotone landscape is shattered so that, as with Caravaggio chiaroscuro, the ground becomes an 'indefinite colour’.

seven Jesmonite tiles. with wave surfaces and print with wave image

Vacuum Fluctuations – UV print on seven Jesmonite tiles.

Time Capsule 1 – Gold plated cast bronze. Installation view of Time capsule 1

The repeated Wave of Quantum Fluctuations, formed of Tuchet-like jesmonite tiles creates endless waves. Waves that reflect on the ceaseless quantum fluctuations of the world.

Time Capsule1 is a gold plate bronze cast of a path through an endless hexagonal landscape. Surrounded by encroaching desert-like drifts of salt and sand, reflecting on environmental decay and the disappearance of the wet landscapes, the gold timelike capsule litters the landscape marking eternal memories of a once-thriving world.

Sun light pass through the fragmented latex surface Fragmented.

Fragmented – Installation view at We Won't Stop Showing, SET, Woolwich.

Fragmented is built of fragments of cheese clothes ladened with latex and pigment. Its surface is littered with the remnant of its nine-month history on the artist's garden fence. Born of the garden fence, Fragmented is a grid which refuses to conform, confronting the rarified white of the gallery wall. A conceptual fold which refuses to accept the distinction between inside and out.

Medium:

Latex, cheese cloth, white pigment, fragments of wooden fence and debris.

Patrick Jones

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What have we done?

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Royal College of Art