Locust Jones

Born in 1963, Christchurch, New Zealand, Locust Jones currently lives and works in Sydney, Australia. In 1993 he graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts at Sydney College of the Arts. Since 1993, Locust has held in excess of 25 solo exhibitions within Australia and internationally including: New Zealand, the United States, India, Lebanon, and Germany. Featuring among his most recent solo exhibitions are: Hitchhiking in the Donut of Death, Gallery 9, Sydney (2009); Back-Handed Bullets, Whitespace, Auckland (2009); What a way to go (2009), Solander Works on Paper Gallery, Wellington (2009); Ride it til it dies, Rear View Gallery, Melbourne (2009); Final Notice, Centre of Contemporary Art, Christchurch (2008); Spin Cycle, Sakshi.Gallery, Mumbai (2006) and Poverty Jet Set, Espace SD Gallerie, Beirut (2004). He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions since 1998 that most recently include the exhibition I Walk The Line New Australian Drawing at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2009); to whom it may concern: the written word in contemporary art, Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne (2009); Riviera Real Estate, Riviera Gallery, Brooklyn, New York (2007) and Diversity 1, Sulkin Secant Gallery, Santa Monica, California (2005).

No Right Turn Artist Statement
My practice is drawing based. I primarily make ink on paper works. Earlier in my career I did mainly painting and printmaking, specialising in wood block prints. The images I draw are derived from different media sources such as the Guardian Weekly, The Atlantic, The Independent, Harpers, National Geographic etc.
I render the images quickly using various implements such as Japanese bamboo and horse tranquilizer syringes and I hardly ever use brushes. The method is, gestural and messy, spillages and accidents are part of the process. The end result is chaotic often cartoon like images that collide into one another.
The work I have been making at my residency in the last 2 months at Penrith Regional Gallery & The Lewers Bequest began as drawings of volcanoes, buildings and giant jellyfish and morphed into papier mache globes and text work using news headlines, then I began cutting up my drawings, cutting out the negative spaces and corners. Cut out shapes of trains, soldiers, riot police and volcanoes are layered onto the gallery wall. By cutting out the images the work becomes less static creating a sense of animation in the drawing.

Artist CV
Locust Jones, deatil of work in Penrith Regional Gallery's Sonia Farley Studio 2010