Seed Bomb in The Newhaven Open Call 2024, BN9 Studio, Marine Workshops, Newhaven UK, 23 August - 8 September 2024
Artists: Gordon Cheung, Julia Vogl, John Walter, Nicky Hirst, Dion Kitson, Marie-Louise Jones, Tom Witherick, Caroline Bugby, Eveleigh-Evans, Louisa Minkin, Annabel Tennyson-Davies, Ian Dawson
Curated by Ian Dawson

This year’s Newhaven Open Call features an exhibition within an exhibition. Hidden within this democratic celebration of local creativity are twelve additional artworks, carefully selected to interact with, cohere, and take root in the Open Call’s environment. These sculptures, prints, and paintings are seamlessly integrated with the other works comprising the broader exhibition. Camouflaged and concealed, this show may never fully reveal itself to its audience, raising thought-provoking questions about how cultural artifacts communicate with us and enhance their surroundings.

Inspired by artist-curators like Goshka Macuga and Ricci Albenda’s mashup Answer Yes, No or Don’t Know (1999) at Andrew Kreps Gallery, Seed Bomb deliberately merges different value systems of artworks and exhibition formats. The title alludes to the strategic yet irregular dispersal of matter. Each of the selected artists uniquely transforms and mutates matter into hybrid objects, from high-visibility jackets turned into animal skins to Financial Times newspapers rendered into stone.

Taking a cue from the work of John Walter, Seed Bomb can be viewed as a study in memetics. The artworks may serve as metonyms for units of cultural transmission, dispersed to interact, mutate, be copied, and remixed within the Newhaven Open Call. In this way, both exhibitions reinforce each other, ensuring that neither is easily forgotten.

>Seed Bomb in The Newhaven Open Call 2024, BN9 Studio, Marine Workshops, Newhaven UK, 23 August- 8 September 2024
Artists: Gordon Cheung, Julia Vogl, John Walter, Nicky Hirst, Dion Kitson, Marie-Louise Jones, Tom Witherick, Caroline Bugby, Eveleigh-Evans, Louisa Minkin, Annabel Tennyson-Davies, Ian Dawson
Curated by Ian Dawson

   >Ian Dawson