G.B. Jones & Paul P.

In their independent practices, both G.B. Jones and Paul P. are well-recognized as draftspeople who appropriate and reposition figurative images from queer history. Devoted to the act of archiving, as both a tool and a creative conceit, they have, over the past 18 years, assembled an oeuvre of collaborative cut-and-paste collages from their copious image banks. Jones and P. are interested in ungovernable sexualities and genders, and in the history of aesthetics forged by those who were compelled to communicate and represent themselves through innuendo and codes. While their collages dwell on the queer lineage of coded language in aesthetics and attitudes, they also posit the violent and retaliatory potential of these protagonists, utilizing images and references relating to riots in Toronto precipitated by police violence: in particular, those around the bathhouse raids in 1980, and during the G20 summit in 2010. Their individual biographies follow.

G.B. Jones (b. 1965 Bowmanville, Ontario, Canada) is an artist, filmmaker, musician, and publisher of zines. Jones’ drawings first received notoriety when published in the Toronto-based queer punk zine J.D.s that she ran with Bruce LaBruce. Her prolific drawing series Tom Girls is widely recognized, and reimagines Tom of Finland’s drawings by replacing all the hyper-masculine subjects with women, subverting the intent into a contribution to third-wave feminist art. In 2002, Jones began a series of collaborative collages with Paul P., many of which were published in the book A Queer Anthology of Rage. Jones’ spray-painted images of Ionian columns— one of which is permanently installed at Cooper Cole— references her post-punk band Fifth Column (1981–2002) and suggests the weaving together of her music and drawing practice.

Jones has exhibited her art nationally and internationally since the early 1990s, in spaces such as Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus; Participant Inc., New York; Mercer Union, Toronto; The Power Plant, Toronto; Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna; White Columns, New York; AKA Artist Run Space, Winnipeg; Muncher Kunstverein, Munich; and Schwules Museum, Berlin.  She was included in the 2012 exhibition This Will Have Been: Art, Love, and Politics in the 1990s, which was curated by Helen Molesworth for the MCA Chicago and subsequently travelled to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the ICA Philadelphia. She has also exhibited at national and international galleries including David Zwirner, New York; Cooper Cole, Toronto; Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto; Feature, New York; Galerie Clark, Montreal; and Or Gallery, Vancouver. G.B. Jones lives and works in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Paul P. (b. 1977, Canada) first gained attention for his drawings and paintings of young men that systematically re-imagined found erotic photographs along nineteenth century aesthetic modes. In recent years the artist’s interests in transience, desire, cataloging, and notation has expanded to include landscapes and their abstraction, and to sculptural works in the form of furniture. In his paintings and drawings, P. references images from the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives and gay erotic magazines produced around the time of the Stonewall riots until the advent of the AIDS crisis. His works appropriate these images and transform them into portraits that exceed stereotypical depictions of queerness, instead creating nuanced portraits and abstract landscapes that convey gestures of introspection, desire, and mourning. P.’s practice also includes sculptural furniture. His geometric, meticulous pieces explore relations between bodies, folding, framing, and manipulating barriers.

P. was included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, New York and the 2018 Front International Cleveland Triennial. He has participated in numerous national and international exhibitions including Queer Thoughts, New York; Lulu, Mexico City, Mexico; Scrap Metal, Toronto; Participant Inc., New York; Griffin Art Projects, Vancouver; Maureen Paley, Hove; Broadway 1602, New York; The Suburban, Oak Park; Freud Museum, London; Institut Valencia d’Art Modern, Valencia; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg, Austria; and the Power Plant, Toronto, among others. P.’s work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Modern Art New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Whitney Museum, among others. P. lives and works in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.