Gemma Brace
curator and writer
British artist Jonathan Baldock’s work has always concerned with notions of holding – holding space for queer and working-class stories, holding bodies, holding and marking time as he witnesses the seasonal changes in his mother’s garden, holding a folkloric faith in nurture, and holding us the audience within his world.
As a child Baldock, born in 1980 and raised in rural Kent, would create miniature fairylands with roofs made from clamshells and moss, and upturned acorn caps for bowls. This playful act of building worlds has never left him. It has since led him to create intimate and immersive spaces that engage with both physical and emotional experiences:
‘I think about these spaces as places where you can pause, reflect and maybe see things slightly differently. I don’t really think of world building as escape. It’s more about stepping just outside of our reality so that we can look back at it more clearly.’
Exploring spaces that conjure up both light and darkness, in Held Baldock guides us through a nurtured wilderness. Here we encounter a hybrid cast of protruding bodies, flora and fauna and ancient deities. Drawing upon traditional crafts, materiality and making – in a nod to his agricultural labourer ancestors – Baldock draws these elements together into one interconnecting ecosystem. His work bears the mark of the artist’s hand at work – shaping, moulding and stitching – a humane presence that extends throughout the exhibition.
In the world that Baldock has conjured up inside Arnolfini’s galleries, tactility and human touch play a central role, and at its heart a larger than life-sized bear awaits us – intentionally made to hug and to hold. This mighty mother bear – containing traits of his own mother’s features – encompasses both a sense of comfort and unsettling vulnerability.
Exploring these tensions, Held asks us to feel not only our own bodily presence in the space, but that of the artist too. As we move throughout, we are asked to consider our own deep need for connection. In this environment the bear’s hug becomes both a ‘radical and necessary gesture’. Invited to gather, connect and commune, even Baldock is unaware ‘how this performance will play out’.
Held is accompanied by a NEW publication including texts by Gemma Brace, Glenn Adamson, Sarah Coulson and Dominic Jones.
See more here.
Image: Held, exhibition installation, Arnolfini, 2026. Photo by Dan Weill. Copyright Arnolfini.