Gareth Jones (1965 – )

Gareth Jones (born Milton Keynes; 1965) studied at Newcastle upon Tyne Polytechnic (now Northumbria University). Jones’ work engages with utopian ambitions and the politics of identity and display, examining how images were used to generate ideals for future living. Jones’ fascination with the vision that surrounded the formation of Milton Keynes leads him to test the iconic status of materials, from magazine pages to polystyrene and stainless steel, while playing with the modular and serial construction techniques that inform the city’s design. He describes the new city as ‘the most ambitious social project of its kind in the UK, a benchmark for Modernist architecture, progressive town planning and the radical ideals of the 1960s and 1970s.’[1]

New City is a digital artwork developed from an extended period of research in Milton Keynes. The artwork uses a sequence of original publicity photographs created to sell the new city to its future citizens and document the extraordinary Modernist architecture. The work is a sequel to a 2003 exhibition of Jones’ in which he re-presented the drawings from the 1970s of the unbuilt city by the revered draughtsman Helmut Jacoby. This photographic essay is a present-day response to the past’s imaginings of an ideal future, with images of the vision realized.

[1] Press release for ‘Gareth Jones’, 15 April – 26 June 2011. MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, http://www.mkgallery.org/exhibitions/gareth_jones/

Artist's website