Amrita Hepi & Althea Tennant | The Family Lexicon

Please join us this Friday 2 May from 6pm to 8pm to celebrate the exhibition opening of Amrita Hepi & Althea Tennant The Family Lexicon (a bone to pick).

The Family Lexicon (a bone to pick) by sisters Amrita Hepi and Althea Tennant transforms Passage into a sculptural sentence, one built not from words, but from turns, overlaps, and quiet gestures. Drawing on the visual language of kinship (its tensions and play), the installation explores the emotional syntax of family: its interruptions, repetitions, miscommunications, and reconciliations.

In titling the work The Family Lexicon (a bone to pick), Hepi and Tennant evoke a private language, half-sentences, glances, gestures that only make sense between people who’ve known each other forever. The site-specific installation of playground slides become pages in that dictionary: nonlinear, unbound, full of slippage and interruption. There’s no clear path down them, only a multiplicity of possible readings.

Glowing inside Passage 24/7, the work becomes a form of public eavesdropping, a glimpse into a private world. The Family Lexicon (a bone to pick) is a sculptural conversation between siblings, but it’s also a broader invitation to consider how we inherit, speak, and reshape meaning through our closest relationships.

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