Pulsating in gestural fields of electric pink, red, yellow and blue, A Slow Teething illuminates Rachel Jones’ kaleidoscopic use of colour and her deeply personal marriage of the figurative and the abstract. Executed in 2020, the present work was included in the exhibition Rachel Jones & Nicholas Pope at The Sunday Painter, London in September of that year. Now represented by Galerie Thaddeus Ropac, Jones has received widespread critical acclaim; her work features in a solo show at the gallery’s London location entitled SMIIILLLLEEEE (December 2021 – February 2022) and was a formative part of the group exhibition Mixing it Up: Painting Today at the Hayward Gallery, London (September – December 2021). She was one of the youngest of thirty-one British artists to participate in the Hayward show and her works stood alongside both established masters and emerging names including Peter Doig, Hurvin Anderson, Lubaina Himid, Somaya Critchlow and Issy Wood. Jones earned her BA at Glasgow School of Fine Art in 2013 and her MA at the Royal Academy School, London in 2019. At only 31 years old, her work now resides in some of the most prestigious museum collections in the United Kingdom and USA, including Tate, London (lick your teeth, they so clutch, 2021), Arts Council England, London (lick your teeth, they so clutch, 2021), The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (lick your teeth, they so clutch, 2021), and The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (A Sliced Tooth, 2020).

Jones’ sensual, sensitive treatment of the mouth as key motif throughout her practice allows the artist to investigate the duality of interior and exterior, for the mouth is an entry point to the inside of the body, and indeed an entry point to the very notion of the self. Her canvases – both stretched and unstretched – illuminate gaping mouths and smiling teeth in high-keyed tones of crimson, magenta, cobalt and tangerine, screaming this organ’s salience in its facilitation of the human body’s most basic functions: communication and speech, breathing and eating. In discussing her tendency to depict the mouth, Jones asserts “I just felt most connected to, and interested in, the teeth and mouth drawings that I was making. They seemed to encompass so much, while also speaking to as many people as possible; everyone has a mouth, and everyone understands what it is to have pain in your mouth and your teeth, or for that to be a site of pleasure, or for things to be expelled from your body in quite a violent way through your mouth. It sits at different register points for people, in a way that is relatable, but also more specific, depending on who the person is, or what their cultural history, race and gender are” (Rachel Jones quoted in: Louisa Buck, “Rachel Jones talks about her distinctive approach to abstraction,” The Art Newspaper, 25 November 2021).