Lucien Smith: Burn Down the House | Kearsey & Gold
Kearsey & Gold’s new space is on the top floor of a building on Brewer Street in Soho, close to a historic red light district that still limps on.
One door, a few floors below the gallery, has a grumpy printed sign: THIS IS NOT A BROTHEL. But the show currently on at the gallery has pure, virginal associations.
It turns out Lucien Smith is a Wizard of Oz fan. For this new show, he has painted small, silver works, studding a blue-painted wall. Look at them, and we’re looking up into a stormy sky, wide-eyed as the virginal Dorothy, as our house falls towards us.
In the show’s press release, Smith references a specific strand of American art. Martha Rosler, Cady Noland, Barbara Kruger. Jenny Holzer’s “Protect me from what I want”. 1980s desire and consumption, an ironic counterpart to Dorothy’s pre-war purity.
“Is the storm the metaphor, or was it the house,” the artist adds. “I don’t think the show is prescribing anything. It’s more a question about what we’re actually building when we build a life, and what it might mean to let it go.”
This is not a brothel. We’re not in Kansas anymore either.
Lucien Smith: Burn Down the House is at Kearsey & Gold (London). 4 June - 17 July 2026