Antipodes 1A, 2A, 3A, 2004
cotton thread on paper
42 x 111.5 x 3.7 cm each framed
each panel is signed and dated ‘with signature 2004’ and inscribed with title ‘Antipodes 1A’, ‘Antipodes 2A’ and ‘Antipodes 3A’ (lower left of each)
SOLD
Provenance
Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney
Acquired from the above by the present owner on 18 August 2006
Antipodes 1A, 2A, 3A (2004) are three early works made from cotton thread stitched onto paper that relate directly to his early light installations. Jones is a perfectionist, each work meticulously stitched by the artist with rows of alternating coloured thread using his mother’s hand-turned sewing machine. Following the threads closely, you see that each work is made from two unbroken threads that snake across the paper to open ends at the top left and the bottom right.
In that way, the work is a record of a performance – the open ends perhaps implying the span of time that came before the work and the time that will come thereafter. Just like his light installations, Jones’s woven works were inspired in part by the communal acts of net-weaving that Jones researched in the early-2000s. Similar sewn works by Jonathan Jones are held in the Collections of QAGOMA, Brisbane, and Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery, Coffs Harbour.
Curator Michael Desmond described the relationship between the woven and light works as follows: “Jones has been able to translate the formal qualities of fluorescent lights into local terms, co-opting the lines, textures and ambience of cast light to an Indigenous reading. The group of stitched drawings shown at the same time as lumination gave clues to understanding the works in these terms. Ostensible diagrams for the placement of light fixtures, the threaded lines equally refer to the sewing activities of Jones’s mother and the patterns of Indigenous markings.” (Michael Desmond, “Jonathan Jones: Into white”, Jonathan Jones: untitled (the tyranny of distance), Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (2008, 2021 ed., p. 9.)