Locust Jones

Locust works with pens, pencils, oil stick or stamping with hacked piece of wood when making a woodcut.

His work often make comment on global political issues, notions of isolation and challenges to the status quo via literal rambling texts and imagery such as trains, deserts, war zones, planes, ships and cars. These crowded compositions suggest claustrophobia, mental processes and an insight into the artist’s consciousness.
Originally a New Zealander, Locust now lives and works in Sydney. He graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts at Sydney College of the arts in 2003 and he completed a Master of Contemporary Arts at the University of Western Sydney.

Since 1993, Locust has held in excess of 25 solo exhibitions within Australia, New Zealand, the United States, India, Lebanon, and Germany. Locust has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Australia since 1998. He was most recently represented in the exhibition I Walk The Line New Australian Drawing at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), with a sprawling 30 mere long work (image above). The gallery first included him in a group show to whom it may concern: the written word in contemporary art, Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne, to very favourable response.

Among his various awards and achievements, Locust was recently nominated as a finalist in the Blake Prize for Religious Art (2009), the Geelong Acquisitive Print Awards (2009), the Shell Fremantle Print Prize (2009), and was awarded the Hazelhurst Art Award (2009).

His work is widely admired and features in several major public and corporate collections including Artbank; University of Wollongong, University of Western Sydney and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, New Zealand.