Jordy Kerwick’s striking new solo exhibition One to Give. One to Take Away will be presented in Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s The Weston Gallery and outdoors this autumn, marking the first UK museum solo presentation of his work.
One to Give. One to Take Away features dynamic sculptures and vibrant large-scale paintings by Jordy Kerwick, most of which were created especially for Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP). An Australian artist now based in France, Kerwick places storytelling and material exploration at the heart of his practice. He creates compelling worlds where reality and fiction blur, inhabited by creatures that evoke the magic of myths and fairytales.
Known for the distinctive visual language of his paintings, the artist creates vast canvases flooded with bold colours and patterns, using characteristic flattened perspective and often set in fanciful landscapes. Within these imaginary realms, wolves, tigers and snakes dwell alongside fantastical hybrids such as unicorns and dragon-swans. More recently he has moved into sculpture, taking his cast of characters into three dimensions, rendered in bronze, stone, clay and even fake fur.
Emphasised in the context of YSP’s landscape are the deep-rooted connections that the legends and fables of folklore have to the natural world. Kerwick builds upon these traditions by inviting us to embrace a more fluid view of the past and forge alternative understandings. His work considers how we piece together a sense of history through archaeology - found objects and fragments that we weave stories around in order to make sense of what has gone before.
Central to One to Give. One to Take Away is Kerwick’s fictional narrative that he accidentally unearthed the sculptures in the exhibition in a secret vault, exposed when renovating his historic property in France. This inversion of reality captures his love of blurring boundaries, alternative histories, storytelling and the idea of parallel existences across time.
Kerwick says: “It is humbling and an honour to have the opportunity to present new and existing works in one of the world’s premier museums. I’m interested in alternate mythologies and imagined ‘what if’ worlds, so I’m thrilled to be exploring a fantastical reimagined historical narrative in such a beautiful context.”
Inside the light-filled Weston Gallery, new stone sculptures and reliefs include After the Storm (2025) and Before the Storm (2025), the Gaillac Stones named after the 7th-century town where Kerwick and his family live. These works expand on his notion of discovering artefacts that provide clues to long forgotten peoples and stories. Three small, enigmatic terracotta figures also draw on this theme.
Kerwick is fascinated by apex predators and the duality of their majestic but threatening nature. Carved in the round, The Reckoning (2025) shows a feathered unicorn being devoured by a three-headed, fanged beast, echoing sculptures from antiquity such as Lion Attacking a Horse (325-330 BCE), and more recently, George Stubbs’s depictions of the same subject.
Four new, large-scale paintings highlight an unusual combination of still life and fantasy. A menagerie of hybrid animals fills the canvases, accompanied by pot plants and flowers to create vibrant but incongruous tableaux.
The exhibition title, One to Give. One to Take Away, reflects Kerwick’s interest in the ever-present interplay of opposites that shape human experience: the fine balance between success and failure, joy and sadness, the real and the imagined. He explores conflicting forces that simultaneously disrupt and create harmony. These opposing forces also draw on the traditions of fairytales and fables – the balance between good and evil where honest characters often find themselves faced with danger and menace.
Outdoors, the three-metre-high sculpture The Presence, The Power (2025) brings together five creatures seen throughout Kerwick’s work: the bear, lion, tiger, wolf and cobra. Each of the stacked heads has two mouths, alluding to the central theme of life’s give and take. This work connects the exhibition across the YSP landscape to his sculpture Hydra vs Bear (2023), which is on display outdoors near the Underground Gallery.
A self-taught artist, Kerwick began his career in 2016, initially focusing on still life paintings. He quickly gained recognition with numerous exhibitions across Europe, the USA, China, Japan and Australia. His visual language has evolved towards more figurative subject matter, influenced by artists such as Henri Matisse, whilst also indebted to more abstract painters like Robert Motherwell and Helen Frankenthaler. One to Give. One to Take Away is the artist’s first major institutional show in the United Kingdom, following his European debut at Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum Madrid in 2024.
Throughout the exhibition, visitors can engage with the ideas in Kerwick’s artworks through familyfocused activities such as drawing games and sculpture-building. Further reading will be available in the gallery to expand on the themes in the exhibition and the fantastical world created by the artist.
Exhibition supported by Vigo Gallery.
