Keith Rice-Jones: Truly a Love Story

Truly a Love Story presents a selection of montages created by Keith Rice-Jones between 1992 and 2025 for his wife, Celia Rice-Jones. What began as a private exchange -- greeting cards made for anniversaries and birthdays-- is exhibited publicly for the first time.  

Keith and Celia Rice-Jones were partners in life and in the studio, co-founding Wildrice Studio in the late 1980s and working side by side therefor many years. Both esteemed potters and ceramic sculptors, their creative lives were deeply intertwined.

Drawing on the photomontages of the Dada movement, Keith juxtaposes found imagery to construct playfully suggestive narratives of romance and affection. Together, the montages form a visual testament to their enduring love story.

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About the Artist

Trained initially in the Arts and Crafts tradition, Keith Rice-Jones was later influenced by Bauhaus and Modernism (see Keith Rice-Jones : Monumental Sculptures at Surrey Art Gallery)

Parallel to his sculptural work, Rice-Jones pursued a private passion with montages. These owe more to the influential story lines of the Photomontages of John Heartfield than the collages of Hannah Hoch and were most often for Anniversaries or Birthdays for his wife who died recently and form an ongoing love story.

While not true photomontages, Rice-Jones works with chance using found magazine pictures or even found rubbish like Kurt Schwitters’ detritus which he re-combines with suggestions of new story lines. While his sculptures are ultimately about the relationship forms there is a similar consideration with the chance combinations of shapes, colours and overall balance as he builds his images.