Elysium Gallery invites you to the latest of its series of special online artist zoom talks.
Topic: Paul Jones artist talk
Time: Dec 9, 2020 7:30 PM UK Time
Paul Jones develops artworks that focus on how flags operate in the tactics of protest. Flags can be viewed as agents of emotional manipulation or political motivation.
‘ In my practice flags act as visual devices. As a medium they can highlight their role as a territorial marker, a symbol of power, and their own subversive plasticity. Used within the context of landscape, the flag communicates a potential to be read within a framework of identity politics, territory, and authoritative control. As part of material culture, the flags that I appropriate or design often operate as antagonistic devices. The materiality and performative potential of flags and banners have implications for being transformative and affective in protests (Holert, 2014; Neumann, 2007). Whether waved, flown from flagpoles, paraded through streets or burnt in protest, my artwork emphasises the performativity of a flag in terms of dramatizing and politicising identity. The artistic inquiry evidences the potency for flags and banners to operate at a level of segregation (Neumann, 2007), but also as a critical heterotopia (Foucault, Of Other Spaces, 1986/2002), that is, a zone of crisis’.
Through video, photography, flags, maps, texts and performance, Paul R. Jones’s art practice examines how we define our identities and align ourselves with specific cultural markers. Jones has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally including g39, Cardiff; ; Aberystwyth Arts Centre; Motorcade Flash Parade, Bristol; AC Institute, New York; A.T.P Gallery, London and MOTI, Breda. Articles and Publications include Leap Into Action Companion: Critical Performative Pedagogies in Art & Design Education (2019) edited by Lee Campbell, Peter Lang Publishing; DATAMOSH, Internet technologies and Applications (2015); Cerbyd as Project, Numbers Publication (2013); and Small Town Kids, Dazed and Confused magazine (2005).
This elysium gallery & ChangeMakers Swansea led event was made possible through funding from the @celfcymruarts & @nationallotterygoodcauses helping support artists and grass roots arts organisations during the COVID-19 pandemic.
www.elysiumgallery.com
www.changemakersswansea.weebly.com