Exhibition
Jonathan Baldock: WYRD
10 May-28 Sep 2025
Jupiter Artland
Wilkieston EH27 8BY
Overview
WYRD is a brand new commission by artist Jonathan Baldock coming to Jupiter Artland in May.
WYRD transforms the Ballroom Gallery into a zoo of hybrid animals formed from textile and clay. Based on species that have been identified as having same-sex sexual behaviour, penguin, giraffe, crab and elephant mutate into fantastical hybrids of folkloric and mythological creatures: phoenix, harpy, cervitaur and mermaid. The exhibition takes the Old Norse word wyrd, not just to mean strange or different (the modern usage of ‘weird’), but as an exceptional otherness that is tied to destiny, fate and transformation. Baldock’s work finds symbolism and solace in shape-shifting creatures, tracing a line from queer lives, loves and histories through the wyrd, fey and magical. At its core, the exhibition explores our relationship to animals, nature, and our intrinsic interconnectedness to the planet as whole with hope, humour and vulnerability.
In the Lower Steadings at Jupiter, Baldock will exhibit Warm Inside, an evocative installationof twelve hanging sculptures commissioned by Accelerator, Stockholm, in 2021. This group of life-sized cocoons house and protect bodies on the brink of metamorphosis. Hand-spun wool, plant-dyed fibres and intricately woven baskets comprise the works, with ceramic hands, feet and masks within. Some of the works hold dried lavender, a plant used as a sedative, preservative and protection against infection and in burial rites for hundreds of years. The sculptures evoke both the womb and tomb as structures that surround, protect and embalm, marking both a beginning and an end. At Jupiter Artland WYRD and Warm Inside are bodies of work connected by transformation, embodiment and myth. WYRD will be exhibited in the Ballroom Gallery (10 May–28 September). Warm Inside will be on view in the Lower Steadings (10 May–27 July)
About Jonathan Baldock
Jonathan Baldock (b.1980, Kent) lives and works in London. He graduated from Winchester School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. Baldock uses clay, wood, metal, fabrics such as linen, felt, hessian and wool, alongside woven basketry and hand embroidery. He combines colours, textures, sounds and scents to form evocative installations. His works are saturated with humour and wit, alongside an uncanny, macabre quality that channels his interest in myth and folklore. His work often takes a biographical form, while addressing the trauma, stress, sensuality, mortality, and spirituality around our relationship to the body and the space it inhabits.
Recent solo exhibitions include ‘0.1%’ , London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE(2025); ‘Touch Wood’, Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2023); ‘through the joy of the senses’, Charleston Lewes (2023); ‘Unearthed’, Kunstverein Göttingen (2023); ‘we are flowers of one garden’, Stephen Friedman Gallery (2023); ‘I’m Still Learning’, La Casa Encendida, Madrid(2021); ‘Warm Inside’, Accelerator, Stockholm (2021); and ‘Me, Myself and I’, Kunsthall Stavanger (2020). Following a Freelands Lomax Ceramics Fellowship,‘Facecrime’ was exhibited at Camden Arts Centre, London, Tramway, Glasgow and Bluecoat, Liverpool (2019).
He has participated in group shows including ‘Poor Things’, Fruitmarket, Edinburgh (2023);‘Strange Clay’, Hayward Gallery, London (2022) and ‘Human Conditions of Clay’, Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff (2021). His works are included in collections including Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; Arts Council Collection, London; The Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool; The Roberts Institute of Art, London and Saatchi Gallery, London. Baldock is represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and Nicelle Beauchene, New York.