Interview with Beth Jones

Beth Jones is a young creator currently studying in York, who is heavily involved in her student gallery and debuts her collage work in their most recent exhibition. We asked her about her creative projects, and the inspiration and  processes that are involved. 

Approaching the end of her undergraduate degree in History, Beth uses her creativity as an outlet to express her emotions, and plans on taking creativity with her into her career. I am interested in creative Public History - letting people discover history in a creative way. She stresses the importance of creative learning, Given that the UK's education system is so rigid and focused on exam performance, I think it’s so important that we incorporate different types of learning into our lives. For her, a creative approach to learning began young, however it took an abundance of free time as a consequence of the 2020 lockdowns for her to design and create without constraints. 

Until then, Beth didn’t consciously engage with the idea of producing ‘art’ because of a learned perception through school that being able to capture fine art in a conventional form was the primary way of engaging with the subject. Having since altered her understanding of creativity, she’s been unstoppable. She had never exhibited anything at a physical exhibition before the Norman Rea Gallery’s 90’s-rave-themed Norman Rave exhibition of October 2021, where she showcased two collages: 2037, and LIFE of the party. The gallery gave her space to forge connections, and to witness a broad reception from others to her work, I had a particularly memorable chat with someone I had never met before about how powerful, fluid and energising art forms like collage and graffiti are.

Being surrounded by a community of like-minded artists and creators is important for Beth, who’s role as Graphic Designer for the fully student-run Norman Rea Gallery has allowed her the opportunity to meet and collaborate with so many people. I think student art and artistic spaces are so important for expression and sense of community, she says. Curating and running exhibitions is exciting, and engaging with local artists is very rewarding. I have found it cool to learn from different people’s perspectives on curation, given that we all come from different viewpoints and various academic disciplines.

The projects that Beth has been involved in have direct impacts on local communities. Last year she designed and sold 100 sustainably-produced and ethically-made t-shirts to fundraise hundreds of pounds for Amnesty International and Solidaritee. A few months prior Beth had her collage This is not a game involved in a collaborative project titled Represent York, in partnership with the York Anti-Racist Collective society. Her piece is representative of the way in which black liberation activism has often historically been, and continues to be, seen as unnecessarily 'troublesome', 'provocative' and 'disruptive.'  It encapsulates the stark contract between the strength of activists and the cynical and dismissive way in which politicians and the public reduce black lives and the movements for justice.

A zine of artwork and interviews was sold to raise money, but this isn’t the only zine Beth has helped to create. The Represent York project inspired me to channel my political frustration into an artistic outlet. But my inspiration isn’t just political - I recently made a small zine (using the ‘Grrrl Zine Fair’ zine making kit as a starting point) after two people I knew well sadly passed away in the space of a couple of months. Beginning with a kit of purpose-made materials can encourage creativity, but as an artist who works predominantly with collage this isn’t always the case for Beth, who talks us through her creative process:

I start with an emotion, which I then develop into a general idea for a piece… transforming this emotion and idea into physicality starts with going through magazines / newspapers / catalogues to cut out material that appeals to me aesthetically and embodies the particular colours and themes of the concept. She lays her material on a surface and physically moves bits around to experiment with what works best, before sticking everything down in layers and sometimes accentuating features with pen or paint, in a final layer. Beth likes the tangibility of analogue materials, I prefer creating with physical materials as I get quite a lot of creative energy from their materiality. Big collages using physical materials are so fun to do because they can provide you with perspective and facilitate a more raw creation process. She admits to enjoying learning to work with digital applications like Procreate, Brushes and Canva, the crispness of the designs you can create digitally really appeals to me aesthetically. An advantage of digital creation is that you can very directly manipulate, as she’s done with graphics in the past. 

Beth’s work is colourful, dynamic, and socially-charged. Fundamentally, she wants change. I am very interested in any art that changes the way we perceive things, questions the viewer, or challenges norms and binaries. I hope that my art somewhat encourages people to rethink our conventional understandings of the world, life and living. She recently wrote for the Norman Rea Gallery blog, an article titled: The Power of Art to Subvert: Political Resistance through Cartoons, Collages, Placards and Paint, which encapsulates her interests exactly. She would advise anyone starting on their creative journey to validate their creations, anything and everything is ‘art’, so don’t think that your designs or creations don’t count. Have fun, even if you think it’s weird or crazy!