Kelly Jayne Jones

Kelly Jayne Jones is a Manchester based artist making work that combines performance, installation and sound. She is mostly self taught and began working in DIY experimental noise music and her practice has expanded to include dance, gesture, sonic drawings, stone sculpture and film scores.

She is interested in creating a multi-sensory experience that creates possible conditions for communication and exchange. Creating contemporary zones bordering quantum fictions, where communion may have the potential to explore our inner dimensions. She is currently exploring animist ideas around the breath and spirit of mountains and rivers and how we can reconnect with our planet by means of ancient and modern rituals. Her work traverses the emotions of desire and anxiety, the comfortable and uncomfortable edges of our inner spaces and social co-existence. She is interested in presence and performance as a site for potential transformation; interpersonally and communally.

KJJ has collaborations with Hannah Ellul (White Death), Greta Buitkute (Clout then Grappling), Dan Valentine from Rainer VeilandHaris Epaminonda. She was one half of the grouppart wild horses mane on both sides,which disbanded in 2016. She has performed across Europe in DIY venues and has been commissioned for works with projects at dOCUMENTA13, Tate Modern, ICA London and CCA Glasgow, Le Plateau Paris, Borealis Festival & Kunsthalle Bergen Norway, Tectonics contemporary music festival, Hangar Bicocca gallery Milan, Sheffield Site Gallery, the Whitworth Manchester and the Huddersfield contemporary music festival (hcmf//2019). Recently she had a collaborative work with Haris Epaminonda,Chimera, shown at 58th Venice Biennale 2019, Haris won the Silver Lion for best young participant for this film. Nominated for Tetley Jerwood solo exhibition Nov 2020.

Upcoming commissions with CoMA, Bristol New Music, TUSK festival  and a residency at Bidston Observatory in Liverpool.

www.kellyjaynejones.org

Featured releases

Whether solo, as part of Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides and White Death, or in her other collaborations, Manchester-based artist Kelly Jayne Jones work has always brought a distinct otherworldly flavour to proceedings - one that reaches for both individual and collective solace in the abstract. Side-stepping any potentially reductive spritualism or exoticsm, Kelly has built a multi-faceted practice over the years, engaging with quantum fictions, animist ideology and music as a site for transformation. With that, she has expanded her tools from flute, contact mics and tape works to include dance, gesture, sonic drawings, stone sculpture and film. 'The Reed Flute is Fire' is the most distinct rendering of her practice thus far, confidently embracing electroacoustic composition with a deft and gentle touch. Elements of field recordings, synthesis, instrumentation and voice are brought together in rich oneiric technicolour, like iridescent streams of flowing, dripping and splashing water soaking an imaginary landscape. Sliding bass tones and thick drones add both tonal hues and reframe the musical narrative - pushing and pulling the journey in new directions. While a tryst with nature and technology is suggestive within the albums' aesthetics, Kelly makes clear that such a symbiosis is never reached without constant exploration and points of arduous upheaval. A 4-dimensional sonic journey over land, city, air and water in worlds both real and unreal. -- Kelly Jayne Jones - voice, flute, electronics -- Mastered by Oliver Barrett Mixing and additonal processing by Guillaume Dujat

Kelly Jayne Jones – the reed flute is fire

Forthcoming events

Sunday 19 January 2025

Minimum Wage Immanence Unit + Kelly Jayne Jones + Lee Patterson

£14 £12 Advance £7 MEMBERS

Past events