Bethany Stead and Amelia Frances Wood present their first duo exhibition, Sackcloth & Ashes. This exhibition takes Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” as a starting point for both artists to respond. A pivotal text, which aims to challenge the narrative of human history, and suggests that the first human cultural devices were containers or pouches; for carrying, gathering and holding – as opposed to weapons of conquest and violence. Le Guin adapted anthropologist Elizabeth Fisher’s observation that “the first cultural device was probably a recipient”, arguing that the same principles apply to fiction, which serves as a vessel for thoughts and stories. Through their individual artistic voices, Stead and Wood explore ideas which shift and defy the anthropological focus on domination and consumption, towards care, cooperation and simply existing, further solidifying the notion that sculpture, drawing and image-making, can too, serve as containers of stories and ways of being.
