Rekha Godbole is an interdisciplinary artist whose use film, light projection and sound to reimagine and interweave connections between mythology, family heritage, and social history. From the unapologetically irreverent and mischievous, to the contemplative and sensitive, Rekha's work explores combinations of meaning, media, and materials to fill in the gaps of partial or misinterpreted stories of relationships, migration and belonging.

Inspired by Edward James' 1937 novel, The Gardener Who Saw God and Marcel Duchamp's Rotareliefs, Rekha developed a site-specific film and audio installation situated in the Old Dining Room of West Dean House.

The installation is influenced by excerpts of James' prose which depict the epiphanies and visions experienced by the Head Gardener, Joseph Smith. Refrains of Beethoven's 3rd Symphony (Eroica) resonate in Smith's mind, after sneaking into the grand old house under the cover of darkness, where he listens to the Master's gramophone recording whilst the elderly housekeeper, Mrs Magginery, sleeps one sweetbriar scented midsummer night. Throughout the novel, James writes of the interconnectedness of all things, the Cosmos, the infinite and the infinitesimal, love, loneliness and the follies of Edwardian and Interwar English society.

The location of the Old Dining Room (described in the novel as The Old Writing Room) is documented as the place where Edward James experienced his own hallucinations whilst experimenting with psychoactive substances. The installation uses layered digital projections of animated found imagery from a contemporaneous astronomy encyclopaedia, and a composition of manipulated passages of the Eroica Symphony and the clock chimes that can be heard ringing dissonantly throughout the house, played through multichannel speakers intended to shape and direct the sound.

Melissa Sharpe's subject matter is deeply intertwined with her environment and her experiences as a female artist, prop and set stylist, wife, and mother. She delves into themes surrounding domesticity, the concept of home, mental health, as well as the essence of 'femaleness' and its marginalised voices. Her chosen materials reflect these complex narratives with much of her practice involving scavenging debris from abandoned buildings, charity shops, and antique markets. Here amongst the everyday she finds the essential and embedded histories of the female, drawing meaning and inspiration from such items and seeking to establish common ground, viewer kinship, and a therapeutic undertone through relatable mediums and subject matter.

Created in response to the collection at West Dean, Below Stairs is focussed on the often-forgotten domain of the domestic and everyday. The cellars of the Main House offered a wealth of objects and histories to enquire into. The 'servant bell box', a key tool of communication in stately homes of the 19th and 20th centuries, became a focal point where the world of 'above' and 'below' stairs collided. The object that allowed members of the household to summon servants from different parts of the house is here combined with large-scale images of hidden objects that hint at the stories, lifestyles, and struggles of the working-class occupants employed in this environment.