Rachel Jones’ paintings and sculptures explore her evolving relationship with colour, the human figure, and sexuality—motifs that have long shaped the language of art. Yet under Jones’ hand, these familiar tropes are reimagined to probe the broader historical conditions that determine how art is seen and valued. Her work opens a space of reflection where the context and positionality of the art object are as charged as its formal qualities. In this light, the fraught history of African sculpture’s reception in early twentieth-century Europe—later institutionalized under the dubious category of “Primitivism”—emerges as one among many critical threads her practice touches upon.
