Viewing Sarah Jones’ artwork is like looking out a window in slow motion, the decreased speed causing details normally unnoticed to be brought into stark relief. Time is at a standstill, her works darkly capturing objects and exploring how their meaning is transferred upon being flattened into the photographic medium.

This week Maureen Paley kicks off Jones’ sixth solo exhibition, with her expanded ‘Cabinets’ series further investigating the way the everyday can become something else entirely upon closer inspection. As Jones explains, there is much to be discovered…

Tempe Nakiska: How do you feel the still life medium continues to evolve and what is the energy that keeps it running?
Sarah Jones: Artists have often looked at how objects might carry meaning – whether the singular object or a collection of objects grouped together. Studying something at close range might convey something about the world we live in or more formally about light, shape, colour etc. There is of course a long history of the still life in painting and more recently photography. Perhaps it slows us down a little, allows us to look a little longer at what ordinarily might be overlooked. Or to consider the everyday in a different context so we might look at it anew.

TN: Your works feel quite poignant, like a tiny moment subtly suspended in time. Obviously this is to an extent the framework of photography itself, but how do you feel you personally craft that special feeling?
SJ: I’m interested in how time is embedded in the photograph. I use a large format view camera so works often take some time to make. My subjects are framed and stilled by the specific lighting I use. Objects I photograph are often already ‘on display’ – a rose plant is tied and cultivated to be looked at, a black horse is groomed, and trained to be comfortable around noise and lights. It stands in front of a black photographic backdrop in my work -to suggest a framing. So that we might study it more closely.

Sarah Jones, Screen (I), 2014

Sarah Jones, Cabinet XI, Orchid, 2014

TN: In what way does an object allow you to communicate a particular message or idea?
SJ: My work in many ways is about the nature of viewing, about transcribing something through the camera, about measuring, sometimes about transformation. Objects are as though perpetually frozen in the photograph – contained and held as if in a museum vitrine.

TN: Your background is in dance, how do you feel this has, and continues to, impact on your photographic work?
SJ: I studied dance many years ago – but I’m still interested in ideas around gesture, or how a dance vocabulary might be built up around how meaning might be conveyed. Or more formally how the dancers body defines and moves through space on stage. I think about this in relationship to the photographic space.

TN: From ‘Screen’ to ‘Cabinet’ and ‘Rose Hip’ there is a rich feeling that runs through such works. How is an image transformed when it is effectively flattened by a camera? Is there a more infinite message created in the process, and what might this be?
SJ: My work explores these questions – what is the transformation – in applying a formal set of rules – a frontality, a stripped back palette a distance from camera to subject… what happens beyond that? We all shape and form things in particular ways – use particular words or sentences to attempt to describe or recall something. I draw inspiration from other artists who developed their language over many years, often returning to the same subject. For example Morandi’s paintings of bottles in his studio, Karl Blossfeldt’s studies of plants, Florence Henri’s mirrored still lifes. Perhaps the peculiarly photographic flattening that I emphasise is a form of preservation – the photograph as a cabinet of curiosities.

Sarah Jones, 17th March – 19th April at Maureen Paley, 21 Herald Street London E2 6JT