Jarvis Cocker and Kim Sion to curate art exhibition at Hepworth Wakefield

A new exhibition curated by Jarvis Cocker and his wife, the creative consultant Kim Sion, will open at Hepworth Wakefield next year, aiming to encourage people to discover their own creativity.

Opening in May 2027, the Hodge Podge will bring together a personal selection of works challenging conventional ideas of what art can be.

The Hepworth said the show would invite “unlikely conversations and interesting encounters” between artists such as Jeremy Deller, Peter Doig, Barbara Hepworth, Klara Kristalova, Emma Kunz, Mark Leckey and Agnes Pelton, as well as unknown outsider and visionary artists never exhibited in UK public museums.

“We’ve chosen works that have stuck with us over the years,” Cocker told the Guardian. “We’re trying to encourage people to realise that they have creativity within them.”

The museum said the exhibition reflected the couple’s interest in alternative means of expression, class and the way communities come together outside religious or elite settings.

“It’s always been important for people to express themselves creatively, but it’s especially so now, when you can have other things to do it for you,” Cocker said.

He said when times were tough, and “the outside world seems to be becoming a not very nice place”, people often had to look within for something sustaining.

“Because they’re not going to get the help from the inhospitable outside world, it’s important to realise that you are capable of doing things. You don’t have to be a consumer all the time. It’s important to be a creator as well. That’s what makes humans different to other animals, we’re able to look at the world and create things based on our experiences of it.”

He added: “There’s no other alternative being espoused except capitalism. And capitalism is all about consuming things and buying things. That’s how you prove your worth as a citizen. But we weren’t born as capitalists, we were born as creative creatures. We’re trying to take people back to the Garden of Eden, basically.”

Cocker and Sion will explore alternative spiritualities, psychedelia, fandom, dreams, poetry and music. The exhibition will also include an immersive Dreamachine, the flickering light device co-invented by Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville in 1959.

Designed to be viewed with closed eyes, it is intended to induce vivid visual patterns and altered states of consciousness.

“Everybody sees different things,” Cocker said. “Gysin was apparently in the back of a car driving down an avenue with trees, and the sun shining through the trees made this kind of flickering effect and sent him into a funny state.”

In the Hodge Podge Manifesto, the couple note the phrase originated in the 15th century from the Middle English-French phrase hochepot, meaning a stew made of many ingredients.