Facecrime by Jonathan Baldock (bluecoat gallery)

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Jonathan Baldock 'Facecrime' - Exhibition at Bluecoat in LiverpoolJonathan Baldock currently has his exhibition Facecrime at the Bluecoat Gallery, where he uses ceramics, sculpture and sound to create an installation full of expressive characters. The ceramics sculpture consists of body parts and expressive faces.

When I walked into the exhibition my honest first thoughts where this is a room of weirdness and I love it. The installation has this sense of surrealism, it almost felt like I was walking through a real-life Dali painting or something. There’s this weird almost demented way of expressing how we use objects and our bodies to communicate. Then there’s the crazy overexaggerated yet simple facial expressions within the ceramics where the sounds of laughter, sighs and groaning appear to come from and echo through the room, creating this creepy yet playful space. Jonathan uses this to discuss the importance of communication and how it is ever evolving form, from hieroglyphics to the English alphabet and emojis.

Its kind of interesting that this exhibition opened not long before the corona virus lockdown and I guess is still technically on display during this weird time when communication via social media etc is vital. Right now our lives are kind of revolving around this use of technology to communicate and we are realising how much human interaction is important in our lives more then ever before. I know this isn’t the initial idea Jonathan had when making this exhibition but I think it does make this weird connection, especially because I feel like right now we are living in surreal times where the world just doesn’t seem quite right or even real at times and then there this exhibition I went to just a few days before the lockdown which I described as feeling like I was walking through a Salvador Dali painting. I feel like I sound crazy making these connections, but right now this is blowing my mind.

Anyway, I found this exhibitions really weird and surreal and I hope to visit this again after lockdown.

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