Sarah Sparkes
NEW DARK AGE
new dark age

Curated by Dean Kenning.
BEAGLES & RAMSAY, JOHN CUSSANS, ANTOINE CATALLA, ENGLISH HERETIC, DEAN KENNING, DAN MITCHELL, PAUL SAKOILSKY, SARAH SPARKES, NATSUKI URUMA, MARC VAULBERT DE CHANTILLY

at Hats Plus, 101B Kings Cross Rd, London WC1X 9LP. Tel. 07814 682 439

PRIVATE VIEW: THURSDAY 20th March 6 - 9 pm
With a live outdoor performance by Natsuki Uruma & Phillipa Horan
and ritual electronics by English Heretic: 'The London Tauroctony' at The Carpenters Arms

EXHIBITION RUNS: 21 MARCH - 13 APRIL, Fri - Sun 12 - 6pm

'Free School in a New Dark Age' organised by John Cussans will take place every Saturday throughout the duration of the show, with a different guest speaker. 4 - 6 pm. All welcome.

The smile of Reason brings forth monsters: we spy them through the orifices of our psyches once the light bulb of truth has been switched on and our enchanted teddy bear-gods snatched from our trembling infant clutches. A terrible illuminated face beams down at us: ‘I am not your Master but I exhort you to be free: Dare to know that the daemons of your own invention are merely the reflection of the devils that you yourselves are!’
We shivered boldly in this invigorating light which shone without warmth, and hardly noticed as the insidious false sun of Spectacle arose like a hot air balloon on the horizon of our newfound individuality, eclipsing that cold, unblinking visage of self-knowledge and infantilising us once again with the fairy tale of narcissistic self-gratification. Even art’s will to Truth was fed through the mincer of commodification: a self-sacrificial Ideal reduced to a desperate network of competing egos, and a collection of random artefacts perspiring under the strip-lights of the art fair.
A new disenchantment grips us now, emptiness amidst consumer dreams, and so we reach for the toy box once again, dragging out gruesome, moth-eaten idols of old – and some shiny new ones bred to fit the spirit of our celebrity space age – in order to externalise our inner daemons and escape into the mental comfort zones of religion and superstition. Spiritually unsatisfied, desiring meaning, we welcome the old Master back. Or alternatively, in the face of this voluntary blindness, we step into the spotlight of reactive positivism, unaware of how self-certainty itself gouges the eyes of intelligence. The ‘new atheism’ is a Christmas hit, providing a warm glow of intellectual superiority, but it fails to notice that the abyss is staring back. The pit of irrationality at the heart of thought serves the Master when left to fester unobserved. And so it is time to go underground, to retreat from the relentlessly atomising glare of media exposure and the crushing milestones of professional success, to feed on a diet of worms, to reanimate the calcified corpse of freedom. We are entering a new dark age – embrace the darkness!

Dean Kenning