Jerome has developed an abstract and collaborative painting form called Action Black. This ongoing body of work explores how living moments are captured and expressed in abstract painting. In the first of three stages, glossy black paint is applied to vinyl floorboards.

 

The painted floorboards are then exposed to different experiences, including fashion shows,  performances and protests. In 2020, marking the Windrush anniversary, Jerome wheeled the floorboards from Windrush Square in Brixton, past Brixton Market and Tate Britain en route to Parliament Square. Having joined a Black Lives Matter protest and spoken to members of the public, inviting them to express their thoughts as daubing’s on the mobile, painted surface. In this way, stories, responses, and ultimately energy, were gathered: 

'There are no limitations to the types of experiences the installation can be put through … In this way the work is a sort of metaphor for the complexities and richness I feel when I think about what it means to exist as a Black person.'
—Jerome

In the final, transformative, stage of Jerome’s process, the paint is stripped from the floorboards and used as a medium in the abstract Action Black compositions, of which People Who Believe, 2024, is a striking example. 

 

Jerome (b. 1991, London) lives and works in London. Jerome graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2019. Selected exhibitions include Man Like, Harlesden High Street Gallery, London, 2024;  Beyond Boundaries, Guts Gallery, London, 2023; Minor Attractions, Niru Ratnam, London, 2023; Life Is More Important than Art, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2023; Memory of Architecture, Filet Space, London, 2022; Ghost-Like Traces, Unit 1 Gallery, London, 2022; Precarious Straits, TOMA, Southend, 2021; Play and the Post-Peak, The Factory, London, 2021  and Rubens to Sickert: The study of Drawing, Reading Museum, Reading, 2020. Jerome is Vice Chair of a-n The Artist Information Company.