Gin Rimmington Jones

Gin Rimmington Jones

I am a photographic artist based on the South Coast of England. I work with images that explore relationships between humans and the natural world, time, space, the complexities of seeing and the photographic.

ginrimmingtonjones.com

Michéla Griffith

In 2012 I paused by my local river and everything changed. I’ve moved away from what many expect photographs to be: my images deconstruct the literal and reimagine the subjective, reflecting the curiosity that water has inspired in my practice. Water has been my conduit: it has sharpened my vision, given me permission to experiment and continues to introduce me to new ways of seeing.

michelagriffith.com

In this issue, we talk to photographic artist Gin Rimmington Jones about her striking portfolio of work that draws upon a deep personal connection to stones.

Gin has been drawn from the outset to working in series. She talks eloquently about why stones resonate for her and recur in her work. Onlookers may think in terms of subject, but for Gin, process and time are key considerations.

For Gin, the family’s camera was a precious thing, but the memory of it stayed with her and later on, she found a freedom with digital photography to follow her curiosity with the added benefit of instant feedback.

It’s easy to think that by not starting sooner or becoming more serious about our passion earlier on, we have missed out. What we rarely appreciate at the time is that we bring to our work both our early interests and our life experience, and it is enriched as a result. Photography allows us to both lose ourselves and find ourselves, and time is part of that process too.

Slipping Worlds, 4

Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself - where you grew up, what your early interests were, and what that led you to study and do?

I grew up on a farm in a small village in SE England, so from an early age, I was aware of the rhythms and cycles of the natural world almost by osmosis. Being a tenant farmer and making a living from the land was very hard for my father, it was an uncertain, precarious existence. Each farming year success or failure balanced on the dictates of the unpredictable weather systems and the demands of commerce.

This undercurrent of tension threaded through my childhood, but on the surface, there was the joy of the outside world, which was my playground, where I learnt to respect the forces that shape the earth. My childhood was free and quite wild but very much anchored by my mother, who made sure we learnt about art, music and the classics as well as the flora and fauna that surrounded us. She was a wonderful storyteller and could bring to life Greek mythology for instance, which fascinated me and sparked my imagination.

I was into classical music and literature, reading widely outside the school curriculum, and I also played the piano and wrote poetry. I studied literature at university, but that didn’t work out, and after two years, I left to live in New York for a while.