Steve Des Landes has been in residence at the Williamson since early 2025. This exhibition, made possible by that studio space is an ambitious portfolio of painting, studying everyday life and the politics of human nature through a critical, often judgmental lens.
I know that judgemental is a loaded word, and I suppose I do mean it with all of that weight, but that’s what makes this work work. It has to have that layer of judgement, because it’s personal and social at the same time. Each of the paintings takes a setting and opens it up to criticism or celebration. Some are joyful images of family dynamics, others are hateful, critiquing herd mentality-fuelled divisiveness.
The two works that defined this for me were Displacement (2025) and Toxic Bunting (2024). Both paintings are critiques of nationalism and xenophobia, and neither pulls any punches. Steve Des Landes presents that mass mentality of hate as chaotic, angry, clumsy, and struggling for purpose, but its also fuelled in these paintings by raw emotion, and fearful, dejected expressions.
Particularly in Toxic Bunting, the individuals range from rageful to sorrowful. They are individuals, so the work doesn’t necessarily insult, or seek to offend. It’s slating the movement, and the anger, and the sentiment of racially motivated xenophobia, while acknowledging that these are people with nowhere else to place those emotions.
I love that only painting can do that. I love that it’s the only medium that really, truly offers such freedom of expression, and leaves everything the artist has to say both on the table, and hidden from view.
Not everything is this show is a political commentary or a satire. It’s often comfortable, and works that one person might view as a discredit to the subjects could equally be seen to celebrate the joy of the mundane for another viewer.
The scale of the paintings, as a collection but also individually, makes them monumental, but so does their intent. They aim to say something, and they do.
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Loyalty by Steve Des Landes is open at Williamson Art Gallery & Museum until 23rd May 2026
Words, Patrick Kirk-Smith
