- Venue
- South Square
- Starts
- Friday, May 5, 2023
- Ends
- Sunday, May 28, 2023
- Address
- Thornton Road Bradford BD13 3LD
- Location
- Yorkshire
- Organiser
- South Square Gallery
5 – 28 May 2023
South Square, Bradford
Opening from 5pm, 5 May, with performances by Helian and Waters Green Morris
After more than a decade researching lesser-known and female-led folk arts and customs from the North of England, Wright began painting during the Covid-19 lockdown, and intensified her practice after the unexpected loss of her father in 2021. An only child and intentionally childless person, this body of work is concerned primarily with female solitude and the pleasures and consolations of time spent in nature, engaged in non-anthropocentric sociabilities.
Today, as historically, non-male bodies are often problematised in rural places, felt to be simultaneously vulnerable and potentially dangerous, leading many people to self-limit their access to wild places (effects which are multiplied for those experiencing intersectional discrimination, e.g. around race and disability). Creating images of the body in juxtaposition with the landscape functions as an act of personal reclamation, while also embracing humanity as an aspect of nature, capable of communion in and with the natural world.
The title—misquoted from a love poem by Mary Oliver—might equally refer to grief, to ‘folk’, and to the life force shared by all beings.
Bio
Lucy Wright is an artist based in Leeds, UK. Following a stint as the lead singer in the BBC Folk Award-nominated act, Pilgrims’ Way, she turned her attention to researching and making art about contemporary folklore, gender and place.
Wright received a Vice Chancellor’s PhD scholarship from Manchester School of Art and is a Visiting Research Fellow in Folklore at University of Hertfordshire. Recent projects have included residencies at Marchmont House, Analogue Farm and Morning Boat and exhibitions at Leeds Art Gallery, Compton Verney and Cecil Sharp House.
@lucy_j_wright
