Jonathan Baldock
b. 1980, United Kingdom
Jonathan Baldock was born in 1980 in Kent, UK. He lives and works in London.
He works across multiple platforms including sculpture, installation and performance. He graduated from Winchester School of Art with a BA in Painting (2000-2003), followed by the Royal College of Art, London with an MA in Painting (2003-2005).
Baldock’s work is saturated with humour and wit, as well as an uncanny, macabre quality that channels his longstanding interest in myth and folklore. He has an ongoing focus on the contrast between the material qualities of ceramic and fabric in his work. Concerned with removing the functional aspects of the materials he uses, Baldock instead works in a performative way through his sculptural assemblages, bringing the viewer, the object and the space they simultaneously occupy into question as a theatrical or ritualistic act.
In 2021 Baldock had solo exhibitions at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain and at Accelerator, Stockholm, Sweden. He has recently participated in group shows including ‘Strange Clay’ at Hayward Gallery, London, UK (2022); ‘Threadbare’ at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, UK (2021); ‘Human Conditions of Clay’ at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Wales (2021); and the inaugural Towner International biennial at Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, UK (2020). In 2023, Baldock will have solo exhibitions at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield and at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.
Baldock’s first solo exhibition with Stephen Friedman Gallery opened in September 2019 and presented a series of ceramic masks featuring bright colours and outlandish expressions. This show coincided with the presentation of a large-scale, interactive sculpture by Baldock at Fitzrovia Chapel, London during Frieze week. In the spring of 2019, Baldock’s solo exhibition ‘Facecrime’ opened at Camden Arts Centre, London following a Freelands Lomax Ceramics Fellowship. The exhibition travelled to Tramway, Glasgow in August 2019 and Bluecoat, Liverpool in March 2020.
Other notable solo and two-person exhibitions include ‘Me, Myself and I’, Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway (2020); ‘LOVE LIFE: Act 3’, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, UK (2017); ‘LOVE LIFE: Act 2’, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, UK (2017); ‘There’s No Place Like Home’, Southwark Park Galleries, London, UK (2017); ‘LOVE LIFE: Act 1’, PEER, London, UK (2016); ‘The Soft Machine’, Chapter Gallery, Cardiff, Wales, UK (2016) and ‘A strange cross between a butchers shop and a nightclub’, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, UK (2013). Baldock’s work recently entered the Arts Council Collection, UK.