Baldock’s busts are inspired by the rigid imperial poses of classical Greek and Roman sculptures. Baldock uses this stylised and commanding format as a foundation on which to layer a myriad of cross-cultural and gendered references. His portraits are always modelled on white male features – an archetypal generic – that when ornamented become flirtatiously androgynous. For Baldock this desexualisation becomes a matter of fetish’s fashion. In his process of working, dough becomes both body and its mortification: sticky, wet, heavy, and suffocating. It’s beaten and pummelled in a ritual of embodiment, purification, and preservation. As Baldock explains, “It’s not only beauty, it’s about playing with perceptions of materiality.”