Kevin Kane’s Uncultivated Gods at Hoxton Arches Explores Modern Worship

Uncultivated Gods by Kevin Kane

Last week at Hoxton Arches, the space felt less like a gallery and more like something between a shrine and a stage.

For five days, Kevin Kane presented Uncultivated Gods, a pop up exhibition looking at what we worship now. Not traditional religion, but celebrity, visibility, money, image, control.

The show brought together 29 pieces, moving from large oil paintings to inflatable forms, ceramic objects and a beating mechanical heart.

At the centre stood an altar. Behind it, a familiar face painted like a modern deity. Above it, a three metre inflatable form hovered awkwardly. Visitors were invited to leave offerings.

The paintings were mostly large scale. Bold colour. Loose figures. Charged expressions. In works like Sunday Worship and The Spectacle, devotion looked close to obsession.

The Heaven series drew people in. Men touching. Men floating. Go go boys reimagined as angels. There was no shame in these images. No punishment. Just intimacy placed somewhere it once was not allowed.

You could sense Kane’s Catholic upbringing in the structure of it all, but the perspective had shifted. The symbols remained. The meaning felt altered.

In another corner, an animatronic heart beat inside a ceramic shell. True Love was direct. The sound was steady. Mechanical. It filled the room more than expected.

The preview opened with live performance. Ten ballet dancers moved through choreography by Dan Baines, with sound arranged by Massimo Paramour and vocals by Rhian Guerrero. The evening ended with a DJ set. It felt closer to a collective ritual than a standard private view.

Kevin Kane works across painting and sculpture, often returning to portraiture and relationships. Here, he pushed further into power, desire and belief.

At one point, someone placed a small offering at the altar. It was hard to tell if they were serious. The heart kept beating inside its ceramic case. People leaned closer to the Heaven paintings. They were curious.

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