Artist: Kiki Smith

Timothy Taylor presents an exhibition by Kiki Smith in London, the artist’s fifth solo presentation with the gallery. Spanning from 1996 to the present, the exhibition brings together sculptures and drawings that reflect Smith’s ongoing engagement with the natural world and its connection to mythology, spirituality, and the human condition.

For over thirty years, Smith has developed a symbolic language exploring the relationship between the body and nature. Drawing from folklore, biblical stories, and ancient mythologies, her works consider the ways in which we situate ourselves in our environment, among each other and the many forces of nature.

Two large-scale bronze sculptures, Winter and Capricornus (both 2021), depict the artist’s zodiac sign, the Capricorn. In the gallery, these hybrid creatures—mountain goats with piscine attributes—rear up in defense or excitement, poised to embrace or attack each other. The gentle oxidation of bronze lends the surface of these beasts an oceanic tint, textured over a hide that evokes both scales and fur. Each has a beard composed of flowing, feathery fins. Rather than focus on the human aspect of the traits celestial constellations might dictate, Smith bodies forth the imaginary creature on whom we have projected attributes of rationality, ambition, and discipline.

Flock (2025) is a sculptural work comprising three bronze lambs, two standing and one in repose. Sheep have recurred in Smith’s work since the early 1990s—as has their predator, the wolf. The artist’s engagement with these figures draws on Aesop’s well-known fable about power and injustice, but also the story of Saint Genevieve, who has historically been depicted as a shepherdess and a warrior, and whose devotion was said to bring together even natural enemies. In the large-scale bronze Rest Upon (2009), a feminine figure sleeps peacefully on her side. Resting on top of her is a lamb, its limbs curled in repose. Here, in a tender, surprising encounter, the beings seem to provide mutual comfort and protection to the other. Surrounding Flock and Rest Upon in the gallery are a series of pencil and silver drawings on paper featuring delicate portraits of creatures with fragile, spindly appendages. Though we bring to these animals our associations of softness and timidity, each beholds the viewer directly with unsettling, vacant eyes.

In turbulent, patinated blue bronze, the sculpture Dark Water (2023) comprises a feminine figure that hovers above the ground, held aloft and surrounded by streams of fluid forms. These undulating flows pour from the woman’s eyes, mouth, breasts, and hair; her body produces and is produced by the element of water. Across these works, Smith returns us to the essential interconnection of bodies and ecosystems, cautioning and inspiring us with the stories we tell ourselves about our role in nature.