Gabriel Kidd: I found the giant and he was dead

In their first institutional solo exhibition, Gabriel Kidd presents an immersive installation of sculpture, drawing, sound and writing that draws on local folktale, ecology and medieval concepts of time.

Utilising queer tactics of parody, fluidity and vitality, Kidd reimagines mythology and landscape as sites of intimacy, erosion and transformation.

The exhibition unfolds as a series of vignettes set within the ruined remains of a hilltop domestic dwelling. Figurative sculptures—husk-like, fragile and emotionally charged—appear in moments of private encounter. Inspired by the Saddleworth folktale of giants Alderman and Alphin, the work reframes their story as one of friendship, love, jealousy, revenge and loss. Kidd’s figures—queer, camp, decaying, oily and beautiful—exist in indeterminate dialogue, suspended between tenderness and aftermath.

Meticulously crafted materials are central to the installation. Naturally dyed silk, coloured with weeds, wayside trees and healing herbs, is stitched together with mass-produced sequins and acrylic nails. Whittled pine arrows, poured and cast latex skins and eggs, and Kozo paper architectural forms create a tactile language that merges the organic and synthetic, the devotional and the abject.

A unifying soundtrack, developed in collaboration with organist and composer Willow Swan, fills the space with a disquieting atmosphere. Church organ tones intertwine with phone recordings of techno music and field recordings of wind, water and rain, underscoring the installation as a site of memory and residue.

Throughout, Kidd probes the porous boundary between interior and exterior worlds. Gestures associated with gay cruising culture—poised, slouched or side-lying bodies—invoke coded desire while unsettling fixed notions of individuality and power. Windows, slits and carved sightlines reminiscent of medieval church squints puncture the gallery walls. Treated with the same fleshy materials as the sculpted bodies, these architectural interventions imbue the space with visceral, psychic charge.

Material provenance and cultural symbolism are woven through Kidd’s queered perspectives on religion, natural process and gay culture. Challenging the monumentality and permanence traditionally associated with sculpture, the exhibition subverts gender essentialism and fixed identity. In states of fragility and not-knowing, resilience emerges through transition and the ongoing evolution of materials.

Presented together at HOME, Nicola Ellis: Exercises in Knowing and Gabriel Kidd:I found the giant and he was dead form two simultaneous solo exhibitions by North West–based artists. Across both presentations, Ellis and Kidd express a shared reverence for materiality, processes of production, natural evolution, and our cultural and social relationships to them.