The Confederation Centre Art Gallery (CCAG) will soon be showcasing Philippa Jones’s interactive exhibition Perpetual as a part of its summer offerings. The Newfoundland-based artist was recently long-listed as a nominee for the prestigious Sobey Art Award for the Atlantic Region.

Perpetual opens June 22 and will be on display until October 6; the artist will also present a free public art talk at the CCAG on Thursday, June 27 at 7 p.m. All are welcome for this exploration into the works, a part of the ongoing art talk series offered all summer in the gallery.

Themes of mortality and reanimation

Jones uses the exhibition to consider mortality, reanimation, and the manipulation of time in images and multimedia installations, based on samples foraged and gathered from nature. Her installations and vivid pictures of exposed and preserved natural samples resemble fragments of lucid dreams, revelatory flashes that at the same time preserve the uncanny aspect of the act of capturing life in an image.

“This exhibition aims to bring together the most recent work of Jones, which explores the persistence of things, the continuation of life through art, and the process of grieving,” explains Kevin Rice, Director of the CCAG. “The artist recently lost a close friend and artistic collaborator, and this body of work is her way of dealing with this loss through the creation of beautiful and truthful, if sometimes disturbing work.”

Background on the artist

The exhibition is also part of the RBC Emerging Artist series, and is the result of extensive studio visits conducted in St. John’s, Newfoundland-Labrador by CCAG curator Pan Wendt, who visited almost 20 artists and selected Jones for a solo exhibition. In the winter of 2020, this exhibition will be followed by a show featuring four St. John’s emerging artists that represent the most exciting new talent working in city.

Philippa Jones has been based in St. John’s since 2009 and has a practice that includes printmaking, painting, pen-and-ink, animation, and interactive installations. She has exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada, The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, and the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, to name a few.

The CCAG would like to extend its thanks to the Rooms Provincial Art Gallery and its staff for their expertise and generous assistance, who had shown much of this work as part of the exhibition Philippa Jones: Suspended.