Terri Jones
August 9th - October 4th 2104
Tops Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition by Memphis artist Terri Jones. Jones's show is a response to the Tops Gallery space through a series of sculptural installations. Over the course of the show some of the works will remain while others will be replaced with different pieces. Jones plans to use the space as her laboratory over the next couple of months, changing the relation and understanding of the space through each action or display.
In the main gallery space Jones has placed rocks, painted white, on the ground mimicking the gallery floor. The rocks are paired with cast ice formed from these same rocks. The concrete and the ephemeral forms transfigure the floor, creating a tension where the work both co-opts the floor and is subsumed by it.
In the anteroom dozens of branches painted white are suspended at eye level. The density of this forested room opens into Jones' measured use of the primary gallery.
Jones has considered the distinctive quality of the space: its subterranean nature, connection through a coal chute and a manhole to the ground and sky, the proximity to the river, the white epoxy floor, the cave like entrance...floods, drains, coal, roots.
Jones's show at Tops will channel the mutability of the gallery space. For the show Jones has developed a vocabulary of sculptural objects which will inform how she will interact with the space. The work will shift and change as a result of her sustained engagement.