G.B. Jones Collection

“G.B. Jones is a provocateur…Her weapons: a soft lead pencil, an electric guitar, an 8mm movie camera, a photocopy machine. Her target: the woman-hating, Christian, non-tolerant, stupid mean world we live in. Her goal: Destruction.” – Jeffery Kennedy

“When G.B. Jones enters me, laminates me, dominates me in the way that is so completely G.B. Jones, I am overwhelmed by her lusty ardour. There is no such thing as a victim, only volunteers, and I have volunteered to be G.B. Jones’ victim.” – Vaginal Creme Davis

“G.B. JONES, DEFINITELY THE SASSIEST GIRL IN AMERICA. OR CANADA.” – Joanna Brown

G.B. Jones (1965-) is the Canadian illustrator, musician, filmmaker, zinester, and self-described dyke credited with instigating the queercore movement.

Queercore (formerly homocore) is an anti-assimilationist queer and punk subcultural movement hostile to the respectability politics and Reagan-era family values of the gay and lesbian mainstream. Queercore’s discontents – filmmakers, zinesters, musicians, visual artists, and performers – noted their dual-rejection from normative LGBT+ community and the homophobic hardcore punk music scene, and bashied back with biting sarcasm and smut to forge their own instead. Born out of the mid-1980s Toronto queer and punk scene, queercore’s seditious energy gained traction in North America and parts of Europe in the 1990s and 2000s through independent art and zine distribution networks, and amongst anarcha-feminist, punk, squatting and riot grrrl circles.

G.B. Jones moved to Toronto in 1980 from her hometown of Bowmanville, Ontario, and formed the proto-riot grrrl band Fifth Column with Caroline Azar and Beverly Breckenridge thereafter. With Jones as its drummer, guitarist and background vocalist, Fifth Column self-released To Sir With Hate (1985) andAll-Time Queen of the World (1989), and released 36C (1994) with Olympia-based independent label K-records. Jones put out her first zine, Hide, a multimedia punk fanzine and mixtape cassette, with Candy Pauker and bandmate Caroline Azar in 1981, featuring Fifth Column songs alongside other post-punk bands and experimental musicians.

Following her time as a disenchanted art student at the Ontario College of the Arts, Jones met punk and then-film student Bruce La Bruce at the all-night restaurant chain and local hangout Just Desserts, and the two collaborated on the queer punk zine J.D.’s for seven issues.J.D.’s – standing for Just Desserts, Juvenile Delinquents, J.D. Salinger, James Dean, Jack Daniels, etc. – is widely regarded as a foundational queercore zine and print catalyst of the movement. AfterJ.D.’s completed its run, Jones moved on to createDouble Bill with Caroline Azar, Jena von Brücker, Johnny Noxzema, and Rex, a scathing “hatezine” zine comparing wife-killer William Burroughs to beloved actor William Conrad.Bitch Nation, Jones’ queer zine distro catalog, promoted zines, cassettes and records alongside those of her riot grrrl and queercore peers for ten issues through the 1990s.

Jones’ has directed several “no budget” experimental Super-8 films, such as her first film The Troublemakers (1990),The Yo-Yo Gang (1992),The Lollipop Generation (2008), and music videos for the indie pop band Hidden Cameras includingThe Dark End of the Street (2017). Jones also starred in other experimental films through the late 1980s to the 2000s, including Fifth Column music videosLike This (1990) andDonna (1994), andBoy-Girl (1987) andNo Skin Off My Ass (1991) directed by Bruce la Bruce, the latter which she also contributed to as a scriptwriter and special effects artist.

Jones’ may be best known for her Tom Girl illustrations – a longstanding series of erotic, delicately shaded pencil drawings subverting the fetishization of male authority figures in Tom of Finland’s work, spotlighting lesbians taking back power. Tom Girls debuted in J.D.’s and went on to be shared widely in fanzines, Fifth Column promotional material, and art exhibitions internationally in New York City, Toronto, Vienna, Berlin, Munich and other cities across North America and Europe. Issues ofJ.D.’s as well as other zines and art book monographs featuring Jones’ Tom Girls were seized and destroyed by Canadian Border Services in the early 1990s, as part of an anti-pornography censorship campaign.

G.B. Jones is currently represented by Cooper Cole Gallery in Toronto.