Jonathan Baldock

2025 Commission

WYRD

WYRD, is a brand new commission by artist Jonathan Baldock. 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. These wyrd animals dance, gather, nest and dream together. Their sculptural forms and details are inspired by vintage soft toy manuals and how-to books, dating from the 1970s and 80s. Existing somewhere between human and animal, the hands, feet, noses, ears and faces of these beautifully monstrous beings are cast from the artist and his life partner, Rafał Zajko.

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.

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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.