Musician Jarvis Cocker and his wife, the creative consultant Kim Sion, will organize a sprawling group show at The Hepworth Wakefield in the United Kingdom next year. The exhibition, titled “The Hodge Podge,” will bring together a wide range of artworks across era and media, centered on artists who challenges conceptions of what is considered art. This is the Pulp frontman’s first curatorial effort at a major institution.
“The Hodge Podge” will create unlikely dialogues between artists such as Peter Doig, Barbara Hepworth, and Jeremy Deller, in addition to outsider artists and those who have never before shown in the U.K. The curatorial duo will explore a diverse array of themes including alternative spiritualities, psychedelia, fandom, dreams, poetry, and music as they interrogate self-expression as it exists beyond the traditional art world or religious contexts.
The couple have written a manifesto to introduce the show. They write, “The dictionary says: ‘a hodgepodge is a chaotic, disorderly mixture or a random assortment of diverse, unrelated things. It represents a jumble that lacks coherence or order.’ Yeah? Couldn’t that also be the dictionary definition of the word ‘world?’”
Cocker himself was the subject of a 2022 show at London’s The Gallery of Everything titled “Good Pop, Bad Pop – The Exhibition.” It coincided with the release of his eponymous book, a memoir through objects. “Jarvis Cocker has a long-held interest in art, attending St Martin’s College of Art & Design in the early 1990s, and as a Yorkshireman, felt like the ideal person to work with to consider a fresh way of thinking about and experiencing art,” The Hepworth Wakefield’s artistic director, Laura Smith, said in a press statement. “The art that he and Kim have gathered together in ‘The Hodge Podge’ will encourage the feelings of joy, marvel and curiosity that great works of art can inspire and offer our audiences an expanded idea of creativity and community. We are thrilled to be working with Jarvis and Kim on this incredibly exciting exhibition.”
The show will take place as part of Yorkshire Sculpture International 2027, which partners with The Hepworth Wakefield as well as Henry Moore Institute, Leeds Art Gallery, and Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Previous collaborations at The Hepworth Wakefield include shows with fashion designer Jonathan Anderson and ceramicist Magdalene Odundo.
