Jonathan Baldock's exhibition Held at Arnolfini in Bristol presents a tense world of folkloric psychedelia and pagan aesthetics that is weird, threatening, and utterly compelling. The show features tapestries and ceramics that reach out to viewers, blending care with violence in an unsettling atmosphere.
Exhibition Overview
The exhibition opens with two lifesize felt figures decorated with leaves and greenery, their robes featuring pink holes at crotch level. Ceramic flowers on walls have grown noses and ears, with a tongue poking from a grey poppy. Hands reach desperately from ceramic pots on the floor, suggesting trapped bodies. The second room introduces a pungent odor of fur, wood, and damp moss, accompanied by a deep bass rumble of snapping twigs and breathing. A giant bear on a platform invites viewers to climb and cuddle, creating tension between comfort and danger.
Themes of Care and Violence
Baldock explores the tension between care and violence, love and rejection. The pagan imagery and rural psychedelia reflect his struggle to connect with an England he is genetically from but culturally and sexually alienated from. The show addresses tribalism and community, where one is either accepted or rejected.
Personal and Cultural References
The work is deeply personal, with references to Baldock's mother, her support, and her English garden. It includes nods to sexuality, bodies, English history, and Japanese culture. Faces grimace from pots, flowers grow from anuses. Tapestries feature geometric patterns, bodies, teeth, trees of life, Celtic knots, English roses, ancient inscriptions, and green men.
Atmosphere and Impact
The exhibition's unsettling nature is enhanced by a weird ambient soundtrack that evokes a mythical beast in a dark forest. It blends ancient rites with 1960s hippy love and millennial malaise, as if The Wicker Man were set in early 2000s semi-rural Kent. According to the review, this creates "a somehow infinitely more terrifying, uncomfortable and sinister prospect."
The exhibition is at Arnolfini, Bristol, from 27 June to 27 September.
