Jarvis Cocker and Kim Sion to Curate “The Hodge Podge” at The Hepworth Wakefield
Jarvis Cocker is moving from the stage to the gallery floor. The Pulp frontman and his wife, creative consultant Kim Sion, will curate “The Hodge Podge,” a wide-ranging group exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield in 2027, bringing together works that test the boundaries of what art can be and where it can come from.
The exhibition will unfold across eras and media, placing artists such as Peter Doig, Barbara Hepworth, and Jeremy Deller in conversation with outsider artists and makers who have not previously shown in the U.K. The curatorial premise is deliberately expansive. Cocker and Sion plan to explore alternative spiritualities, psychedelia, fandom, dreams, poetry, and music, using those themes to consider self-expression beyond the conventions of the traditional art world and religious frameworks.
The pair have also written a manifesto for the project, framing the title as both a joke and a provocation. In it, they quote the dictionary definition of a hodgepodge as “a chaotic, disorderly mixture or a random assortment of diverse, unrelated things,” then ask whether that description might also apply to the word “world.”
For Cocker, the project extends a long-standing interest in visual culture. He studied at St Martin’s College of Art & Design in the early 1990s, and in 2022 he was the subject of “Good Pop, Bad Pop – The Exhibition” at London’s The Gallery of Everything, which accompanied the publication of his memoir built around objects from his own life. Laura Smith, artistic director of The Hepworth Wakefield, said in a statement that Cocker’s Yorkshire roots and art-school background made him a natural collaborator for “a fresh way of thinking about and experiencing art.”
Smith added that the works gathered for “The Hodge Podge” are intended to inspire “joy, marvel and curiosity,” while widening the institution’s sense of creativity and community. The exhibition will form part of Yorkshire Sculpture International 2027, alongside programming from the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds Art Gallery, and Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
The Hepworth Wakefield has previously invited collaborators from outside the museum world, including fashion designer Jonathan Anderson and ceramicist Magdalene Odundo. With Cocker and Sion, the institution is again betting on an expanded curatorial voice — one that treats art as a porous field shaped as much by music, memory, and belief as by the museum itself.
