The opulence of a white-cube gallery is amplified the moment you step into Tracey Jones’ solo exhibition, Cultural Baggage, at CBD Gallery in Erskine St, Sydney. The walls’ muted tones accentuate the intricacies of each fold and crumple in the jewel-toned yellow, blue and bright red designer packaging of the artworks.
In this exhibtion, an exploration of the emotional residue of consumer culture’s fragments, Jones masterfully captures the fleeting nature of luxury, like a vanitas painting reimagined for the age of designer branding. Her oil works showcase the glossy surfaces and saturated colours of luxury packaging, exploring how these bags often linger as status symbols long after the purchase is made. From emerald-green champagne bottles with foil hastily torn off to the crushed corners of paper shopping bags, her realistic style is at its most captivating, here.
In the gallery window sits C’nest Pas Un Sac, a small canvas portraying a crumpled luxury shopping bag encased in an ornate, antique frame (reproduced above). The interplay between muted hues, smooth textures and opulent detail creates a visual harmony. The frame itself – a delicate swirl of gilded wood – has been carried by the artist for 30 years, awaiting the perfect painting. Here, old and new luxuries are in conversation: the grandeur of the antique frame encasing a used commodity. It subtly raises questions about the commodification of art – the work being a precise replica of a worn-out bag.
In Mine, a bare crimson designer box is clutched by oversized, detailed arms. The bag’s vivid red seeps into the nearly translucent skin of the hands, with every wrinkle and blue vein rendered with startling realism. The effect is uncanny – eerily lifelike, yet not quite real. A single ring on the left ring finger, slim and topped with a bright red gem, echoes the colour and shape of the box, deepening the visual resonance.
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The bareness of the walls further pulls the audience in; it is the paintings’ starkness that pulls you in further. Looking through the empty glass bottles into a void, these objects only exist to be painted, to be revered as a centrepiece.
At first glance, these paintings seem to exist as mere icons of indulgence. But as Associate Professor Sam Bowker writes in the exhibition catalogue: ‘The experience is fleeting, the memory lasts longer, but the painting outlives all of us.’ And that is precisely the lasting impression of Jones’s work – it endures beyond every luxury money can buy.
Tracey Jones: Cultural Baggage will be exhibited until 14 June 2025 at CBD Gallery, Sydney.
