Pulp frontman's Gysin tribute

Cocker vision encourages fresh dreaming

JARVIS COCKER, lead vocalist and songwriter with Britpop legends Pulp, will bring his highly individual artistic sensibilities to bear in a new exhibition set to feature a version of the Dreamachine, Brion Gysin’s immersive mid-century art installation.

Gysin, long time cut-up collaborator with William Burroughs following their encounters in the Beat Hotel in Paris, co-invented the Dreamachine with Ian Somerville in 1959. Its flickering light effects were thought to have a consciousness-affecting quality.

Pictured above: Jarvis Cocker, singer, artist, curator

The famed construction, perhaps an example of psycho-technology rather than an artwork per se, will be one of the centrepieces in a show at the Hepworth, the gallery in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, named in honour of one of its greatest regional daughters, the internationally celebrated sculptor Barbara Hepworth, who was born in the city.

Cocker, alongside his creative consultant wife Kim Sion, will curate the Hodge Podge, an eclectic programme of left field work exploring, according to the Guardian, ‘alternative spiritualities, psychedelia, fandom, dreams, poetry and music.’

The Dreamachine fits in well to the challenging and disruptive Hodge Podge concept. Designed to be viewed with closed eyes, it is intended to induce vivid visual patterns and alter the mental state of the viewer.

‘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.’

Pictured above: Brion Gysin and William Burroughs with the Dreamachine

Laura Smith, artistic director of the Hepworth, comments: ‘Jarvis Cocker has a long-held interest in art, attending St Martin’s College of Art and 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.’

She adds: ‘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.’

The Hodge Podge, opening in May 2027 and including Jeremy Deller, Peter Doig and Hepworth, too, among others, will bring together artists established and rising and encourage conversations and encounters between artworks of different kinds, each possessing an original vision.

It sits comfortably with Yorkshire’s remarkable modernist legacy: Henry Moore from Castleford, David Hockney from Bradford, Damien Hirst from Leeds and Hepworth herself form a world-beating quartet. And Cocker’s own allegiance to Sheffield, only a little further south on the map, adds a further appropriate ingredient to this impressive mix.

Cocker’s group, renowned for their wit, social observation and political reflection, arose on a wave of new British music in the mid-1990s as UK bands like Oasis and Blur, Elastica, Supergrass and Suede combined distinctly English voices with a kinetic energy not witnessed since punk. Pulp won the 1995 Mercury Prize for their second album Different Class.