Sarah Sparkes and Jane Millar have been invited by host Kim Thornton to curate two rooms in Bell House, The Landing and The Gowan, in response to her theme ‘The Tipping Point Magical or Malevolent? They have taken Octavia Butler’s ‘Parable of the Sower’ as the starting point.
Artists: Jonathan Callan, Chudamani Clowes, Sarah Doyle, Lydia Julien, Marq Kearey, David Leapman, Yair Meshoulam, Jane Millar, Stephen Nelson, Victoria Rance, Alke Schmidt, Lex Shute, Ania Tomaszewska-Nelson, Sarah Sparkes, Sara Trillo, Marianne Walker, Alice Wilson
Octavia Butler’s dystopian novel, ‘Parable of the Sower’, opens in 2024, when capitalism, wealth inequalities, repressive regimes and climate disintegration have led to a rapid and violent breakdown of society. The novel’s protagonist, 15-year-old Lauren Oya Olamina, creates a new belief system, ‘Earthseed’, where the only lasting truth is change and where all the seeds of life may be transplanted and adapted to new situations and locations, ultimately, beyond Earth.
We are all entangled – humans, animals, plants, fungi, earth, water, fire, air – yet it seems that the human condition is to wait for tipping points and transformative catastrophes to precipitate urgent change and then, only as a means of return to an illusionary status quo.
Our artists explore a new awareness of change and exchange, a constant shifting of strange identities, the malleability of being, interspecies communication, and the strength and vulnerability of community. We are imagining new ways to merge, ways to live intelligently and sensually in the flux of a perpetual tipping point.
Sarah Sparkes & Jane Millar 2024
| Duration | 10 May 2024 - 19 May 2024 |
| Times | 11/12 and 18/19 May, 11am to 6pm |
| Cost | Free |
| Venue | Bell House |
| Address | 27 College Rd, Dulwich, London SE21 7BG, , |
| Contact | / / www.bellhouse.co.uk/artists-open-house-2024 |