Taking its title from the 1939 musical The Wizard of Oz, THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME was Jonathan Baldock’s largest solo show to date. Newly commissioned and previously unseen works populated both spaces at CGP London including an extensive installation at Dilston Grove.
Monumental sculptures and live interventions coexisted during the six-week exhibition span. Jonathan Baldock created this new body of work honing techniques and crafts traditionally associated with the domestic sphere, the home. Felting, basket weaving, candle making, appliqué and stitching allude to idealised domestic bliss and gendered roles. Some iconic references from the Wizard of Oz create an interplay with scale, terrors and wonder bordering on the monstrous.
A host of sculptures collaborate and become a chorus: a pouting stained glass window; a human- scale votive candle adorned with waxen ears; a wicker-chain morphs into a human spine; chandeliers shaped like breasts suspend over us with intent; a sandy table in the form of an eye are vying for attention. This fractured human body is patrolled by a mysterious, statuesque white horse further creating a surreal setting.
Dilston Grove – having been a historic church, one of the first concrete buildings of its size in Britain – still carries the idea and the scale of the ritualistic. With Jonathan Baldock’s work occupying such a cavernous space where sculptures are stretching from floor to ceiling, we were encouraged to step within the artist’s created reverie loaded with mythological, folkloric and ceremonial meaning.
The Dilston Grove installation became animated when Jonathan Baldock collaborated with Vancouver’s Kokoro Dance company who interacted within it, in bespoke, sculptural costumes via a series of performances in the gallery space on 2, 7 and 8 July accompanied by live music from Luke Barton and Craig Swan.
THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME is generously supported by The Paul and Louise Cooke Endowment, The Foyle Foundation, Weber Industries, KERAX, Arts Council England and Southwark Council.
Launch Gallery
