Overview
WYRD is a brand new commission by artist Jonathan Baldock showing at Jupiter Artland. The exhibition explores our relationship to animals, nature, and our intrinsic interconnectedness to the planet as whole with hope, humour and vulnerability.
The artist transforms Jupiter Artland's 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.
In the Lower Steadings at Jupiter Artland, Baldock will exhibit Warm Inside, an evocative installation of twelve hanging sculptures commissioned 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.
The main exhibition of new work will run from 10 May - 28 September and a presentation of the artist's Warm Inside works will be on view in the Lower Steadings from 10 May - 27 July.
On 16 August, Jonathan will be in conversation with Queer as Folklore author Sacha Coward as part of their Jupiter Rising programme. Tickets for the event are available to purchase here.
WYRD is a brand new commission by artist Jonathan Baldock showing at Jupiter Artland. The exhibition explores our relationship to animals, nature, and our intrinsic interconnectedness to the planet as whole with hope, humour and vulnerability.
