Ruby Jones’s First Major Exhibition Traces Her Journey From Childhood Sketches To Time Cover
She’s designed the cover of Time magazine, illustrated Jacinda Ardern’s first children’s book, and touched countless people around the world with her work.
Now, Kiwi artist Ruby Jones’ biggest exhibition to date is on at Tūhura Otago Museum in Dunedin.
Soft Lines: Illustrating Empathy with Ruby Jones is her first exhibition in her hometown, which made its opening on December 13 “really special”, she says.
“It was full of people that I had known growing up in Dunedin ... it really felt like a whole full circle moment.”
Its theme – empathy – is a hallmark of her work, and a trait she can trace back to her childhood.
Jones was born with congenital cataracts. When she was just 18 months old, she had a retinal detachment, requiring emergency surgery in Christchurch and many more operations throughout her childhood to preserve her eyesight.
She remembers spending “a lot of time” in hospital, undergoing and recovering from surgery.
“I can’t help thinking that if you go through something like that as a child, you do end up having perhaps a slightly wider lens on the world from a young age,” she reflects.
“And then you get to see other people going through things that are also challenging around you. So my focus on empathy and kindness has been influenced by experiences like that.”
To Jones, empathy means “trying to put yourself in other people’s shoes as often as you can”. She likes to weave that theme into all her drawings, whatever the topic.
“I try and say a lot without saying a lot. I think the simpler something is, often the more people can speak to it.
“That’s what I focus on a lot of the time, trying to get a big concept and just boil it right down to something that people of different ages can also understand and relate to.”
Her best-known example of this is her drawing of two women embracing, alongside the phrase, “this is your home and you should have been safe here” – words that echoed around the world following the Christchurch mosque shooting on March 15, 2019.
More than seven years on, the message behind it feels more relevant than ever, though she wishes that wasn’t the case.
“It’ll pop up that someone’s used it in a different context for a different story, but it’s just as applicable and relevant, and that’s heartbreaking.
“It seems to continuously fit into different stories that we’re seeing every day, no matter how much you wish things had changed. We’re just in a bit of a state of turmoil in the world, I think.”
That illustration was shared around the world, leading to an offer from Time magazine to illustrate their cover story about the shooting. Book deals followed; Jones published the bestsellers All of This is For You and In This Body in 2019 and 2022.
More recently, Jones illustrated former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s debut children’s book Mum’s Busy Work, an experience she describes as an “absolute dream come true”.
They’d briefly met before, but getting the chance to work together was “incredible”.
“It felt like a nice way to collaborate on something really meaningful.
“It was a really, really special project and something I’d always dreamed of was doing a children’s book, so when I was asked to do that, it was a no-brainer.
“There’s no better feeling than seeing a little kid reading your book or getting a message that says, ‘my child loved this’, so if I could just keep doing that work, that would be a dream.”
Jones made the move to Melbourne last year, closer to her brother in Sydney, while her parents are now based in Wellington – but Dunedin will “always be home”.
Growing up in Ōtepoti in a creative family – her dad is an artist, her mum an educational designer, while “my uncles and aunties are art teachers and painters and sculptors” – Jones began drawing at a young age.
Some of that early work is now on display as part of her exhibition.
“[It’s] sort of a journey through the years through objects, which is quite special. I just used to obsessively draw for hours, and so having those actual physical drawings in there is pretty magical for me,” she says.
“There’s also a drawing in there that I did years ago of when I was just really missing home and it was of the view from Signal Hill in Dunedin, which a lot of people wouldn’t recognise, but that’s special as well.”
Creating an exhibition of this scale is a “tricky” process, she says.
“[I] was trying to pull together work from the last seven to 10 years, so it was looking at a huge span of illustrations like, ‘how can I best pull out what I want to say in a small amount of work’? That took a lot of time.”
The exhibition includes immersive floor-to-ceiling projections. Jones creates illustrations for digital screens, so it was something of a challenge to decide how to present them in a physical space.
“I’ve always imagined them being quite small and intimate, and someone looking at them on their own in their room,” she says.
“Trying to imagine them on that large scale projected on the wall was quite hard, as well as working out what would feel best, so it definitely took a few months to figure that out.”
She hopes visitors will get the same intimate experience from the exhibition.
“I just hope they go and perhaps even find one illustration that speaks to them and makes them feel maybe less alone in something, or like they’re not the only one going through something.”
From her new base in Melbourne, Jones is continuing to balance her freelance work as an artist with a part-time editing job.
“I just like stability ... freelance work is so up and down,” she shares.
“At this stage it’s mostly still New Zealand-based work, but that’s the beauty of freelance work – you can do it from anywhere.”
As for what’s next, “this year’s still a little bit of a mystery”, she says, though she can reveal she’s working on her next book.
“I’m sort of in the storyboarding phase, but that’s my biggest focus for now.”
In the meantime, her exhibition has proven so popular back home that it will run beyond its initial closing date of March 29.
“Over the summer break, hundreds of kids, families and individuals have loved the exhibition, writing and drawing their own heartfelt messages and illustrations of kindness and empathy,” Tūhura design and exhibitions manager Shanaya Cunningham says.
“It’s been so successful that almost all our exhibition-related merchandise has sold out.
“We’ve received incredible feedback highlighting not only the quality and interactive nature of the exhibition, but also Ruby’s journey as a local illustrator and her rise to success, a story many Dunedinites didn’t know. Due to its popularity, we’ve decided to extend the exhibition for another two weeks.”
Jones says the reception has been “lovely”. “I’ve had quite a few messages from people saying they’ve taken their kids there and had a really lovely time with them ... so that has felt really good.”
Soft Lines: Illustrating Empathy with Ruby Jones is on at Tūhura Otago Museum until April 12.
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