Grave Goods: A Solo Exhibition By Jonathan Baldock At Nicelle Beauchene Gallery.pdf

Exhibition Dates: March 3 - April 2, 2022
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 3, 6-8 PM

Nicelle Beauchene Gallery is hosting Grave Goods, a solo exhibition by British artist Jonathan Baldock. The show runs from March 3 to April 2, 2022, with an opening reception on the 3rd.

Artist and Practice:
Jonathan Baldock's multidisciplinary practice explores the body's tensions and performances, drawing from craft, theater, folklore, and ritual histories. He employs labor-intensive techniques that challenge traditional value distinctions between high and low art forms, honoring the contributions of working-class people throughout art history.

Exhibition Highlights:
- Sculptures and Wall Hangings: These pieces interrogate the body as a present and absent specter, with sculptures resembling actors on a stage. They incorporate elements like punched, hugged, and torn clay pots and stoneware vessels with visible hand traces.
- Funereal Herbs: Piles of herbs inside some vessels create a subtle olfactory experience.
- Tapestries: Three hand-stitched tapestries made of burlap and felt serve as rubrics to the sculptures. They reference Early Renaissance painting, featuring minimal shapes and overlapping figures that seem to describe bodies between two realms.

Thematic Elements:
- Dualities: Baldock's work explores material and affective dualities, suggesting most things are both tense and loose, sacred and profane, brimming yet leaking, mournful yet joyful.
- Labor and Technique: Emphasis on performance is evident in the handwork and materials used, with traces of the artist's hands visible in every piece.

Artist Background:
Jonathan Baldock (b. 1980) lives and works in London. He has had numerous solo exhibitions internationally and his work was recently acquired by the Arts Council Collection, UK.