G.B. Jones

Opening reception: Friday September 14 2018, 6-8pm

COOPER COLE is pleased to present a solo exhibition by G.B. Jones. This marks the artists first solo exhibition with the gallery.

Active since the early ‘80s, Jones has acquired the status of an underground icon and polymath; for her super-8 films, her seminal ‘zine J.D.’s, and as a member of the Riot Grrrl band, Fifth Column, which are internationally acclaimed milestones in independent film, publishing, and art rock, respectively; and furthermore as primary sources for what became known as Queercore. Concurrently, Jones has always been a dedicated visual artist in the métiers of drawing and collage, who i s best known for her female reprises of Tom of Finland drawings.

The following is excerpted from a text by artist Paul P. writing about G.B. Jones, published in the summer 2018 issue of Canadian Art:

‘By a simple twist her (Tom of Finland) drawings are images of liberation, freed of the fascist tendencies at work in gay male culture… Jones’s latest series of drawings departs from Finland’s meticulous finish for an intuitive, loose and more rapidly rendered likeness. They are portraits of witches, both real personages and those from film and television. Almost all are women, and most are middle-aged. To their overlooked demographic Jones gives aspects of indomitability, from dandyish insolence to an air of consequential power. She re-imbues their well-circulated images from popular and occult culture with a sense of life. There is Agnes Moorehead as Endora from Bewitched; Joan Bennett in her final film role as Madame Blanc; Doreen Valiente, Wiccan liturgist and writer; Rosaleen Norton, an occultist, artist and leader of her own coven. Their energy and image defies the sublunary, workaday world of men, and it is interesting to consider them as Jones’s symbolic milieu.’

‘…The Canadian art world has so far allotted Jones that which is broadly accorded to those of her gender and generation; elsewhere her importance is recognized. In her manifold ways, Jones displays queer genius; like Cocteau, she has moved along her era with an aesthetic that appears prescient, but is in fact of-the-moment. From the ruins of gay liberation, over the bulkhead of late-capitalist gay commodification, beyond the cloy of nostalgia, through the condensed atmosphere of identity politics, she sees our perpetual aim: the resurgence of homosexual art, a two-pronged weapon—one fork, visual pleasure, the other, transgressive pleasure.’

G. B. Jones (b. Bowmanville, Canada) is an artist, filmmaker, musician, and publisher of ‘zines. Solo exhibitions include Past Present Future, 2011, Lexander, LA; La-bas, 2008, La Centrale Galerie, Montreal; Rise Up Thou Earth, 2007, Sunday, NY; Good. Bad. G.B. Jones, 1996, Or Gallery, Vancouver, curated by Reid Shier; Girly Pictures, 1994, Mercer Union, Toronto, curated by Shonagh Adelman; and Feature, Inc., 1991, NY. Group exhibitions include Coming to Power: 25 Years of Sexually X-Plicit Art by Women, 2016, Maccarone, NY, organized by Pati Hertling and Julie Tolentino; This Will Have Been: Art, Love and Politics in the 1990s, 2012, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis, and ICA, Boston, curated by Helen Molesworth; IN NUMBERS: Serial Publications by Artists since 1955, 2010, X Initiative, NY, curated by Andrew Roth and Phil Aarons; Tom of Finland and then some, 2010, Feature, Inc., NY; Smell It!, 2009, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna, curated by Dietmar Schwarzler; Ad Memoriam, 2008, Exile, Berlin, curated by Joel Gibb; Shared Women, 2007, LA Contemporary Exhibitions, curated by Eve Fowler, Emily Roysdon, A.L. Steiner; Wear Me Out, 2005, One Archives, LA, curated by Tania Hammidi; Pink Steam: Artists Respond To Kevin Killian and Dodie Bellamy, 2004, SF Public Library, curated by Colter Jacobson; Practice More Failure, 2004, Art In General, curated by LTTR; Drawing: The End Of The Line, 2003, Ecole Municipale de Dessin, Paris; The J.D.s Years, 1999, Art Metropole, Toronto, curated by Luis Jacob; Sugar, Sex, Magik, 1998, Brasilica, Berlin; Fictions, 1996, Guido Carbone, Turin, curated by Marcella Beccaria; Beauty #2, 1995, The Power Plant, Toronto, curated by Philip Monk; In A Different Light, 1995, University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, curated by Larry Rinder and Nayland Blake; Stonewall 25, 1984, White Columns, NY, curated by Bill Arning; (Tiny) SHOES, 1994, New Langton Arts, SF, curated by D-L Alvarez; The Use Of Pleasure, 1994, Terrain, SF, curated by Bob Nickas; Tom of Finland, G.B. Jones, 1993, Daniel Buchholz, Cologne; Eau de Cologne 1983-1993, 1993, Monica Spruth, Cologne; Coming To Power: 25 Years Of Sexually X- plicit Art By Women, 1993, David Zwirner, NY, curated by Ellen Cantor; Part Fantasy, 1992, Trial Balloon 2, NY, curated by Nicola Tyson; Drawings, 1992, Stuart Regen, LA; Stephen Dillemuth and Joseph Strau, 1992, Forum Stadtpark, Graz, Austria; Situation, 1991, New Langton Arts, SF, curated by Pam Gregg and Nayland Blake; and All But The Obvious, LA Contemporary Exhibitions, 1990. G.B. Jones lives and works in Toronto, Canada.