Bristol, U.K.
Who doesn’t sometimes want to be held, hugged, and comforted? And who isn’t tempted to touch sculptures that are tantalizingly textured or impossibly smooth? British artist Jonathan Baldock playfully addresses these wants/needs in an emotionally and physically engaging way with Bear Hug (2026), the centerpiece of his current “Held” exhibition (on view through September 27, 2026). The life-size hessian bear reclines on a raised platform covered in white felt, its head resting on a pillow. Part teddy bear, part mythic beast, with patterned “fur,” vivid pink nose, and limbs attached with large wooden buttons, it is a beautifully strange sight. Baldock, however, doesn’t limit us to looking. Instead, we are invited to touch, hold, even lie down beside the bear—just as long as we take our shoes off before climbing into its den.
There were plenty of stocking feet on my visit, as children, as well as adults, abandoned their inhibitions and snuggled up to the resting creature. Most reclined and closed their eyes, helped along by a cocooningelectronic soundscape from musician Luke Barton and a woody, floral scent created by Lora Hemy. The bear’s booming heartbeat—only audible when up close—adds another layer of connection, another way to be embraced by the moment. Conceived as a response to the increasingly atomized nature of our lives, as screen time and AI rob us of real-life interactions, Bear Hug acts on Baldock’s belief that public galleries have become vital places of “collective community.” His reasoning is borne out by the bustle and chat among visitors engaging with the work and talking to Arnolfini’s attentive invigilators.
In addition to the huggable bear, “Held” presents a range of not-to-be-touched floor and wall-based pieces that span Baldock’s craft-based practice: colorfully appliquéd felt and hessian wall-hangings; odd ceramic sculptures with protruding tongues, fingers, feet, and buttocks; folklore-inspired costumes and scary corn doll face masks in bronze. Underpinning it allare the intertwined things that define the artist and his work—queerness, a working-class rural background, a love of nature and gardening, the human body, and a close and loving relationship with his mother.
Conceptually and visually, Baldock’s mum is everywhere in “Held.” The bear’s features are modeled on a 3D scan of her face; an endearingly scrappy-looking bronze head with blue eyes, The First Mother (2024), is an enlarged version of a portrait that Baldock made from clay soil at the age of five or six; one side of the stoneware sculpture Becoming Plant (a hop) (2023) features mum sticking out her tongue, while the artist’s face stares out from the other. Beyond these representations, an expanded sense of the responsibilities and tensions associated with motherhood is evoked through works informed by research into mother-child relationships, queerness in nature, English folklore, and rural labor. The Caretakers (Ceremonial Costumes) (2021) features two white gowns with green appliquéd leaf and flower shapes. They stand like sentinels, protectors of mother nature that also carry an undercurrent of menace, a sense that something is dark in the woods. The title of a nearby acid green wall hanging reinforces the point: Nature to be commanded must be obeyed (2019).
Baldock has created something quite special with “Held.” It feels like a defining exhibition for an artist whose work in recent years has become bolder and more assured while keeping its slightly bawdy mix of humor and oddness, sex and subversion. Generous and tough, theatrical and strange, decorative and gently transgressive, it is art with a heartbeat. And yes, I did take my shoes off and have a bear hug.
