‘Oss Mask (2024)

Summer is icumen in!

“Folk is the stuff we make, do and think for ourselves—and the radical potential of these things.”

What if ‘folklore’ wasn’t just a niche interest, but a potent agent for resistance and change?

About Lucy

Lucy Wright is an artist based in Leeds, UK. Her multidisciplinary practice sits at the intersection of folklore and activism, often using as source material the large personal archive of photographs and research she has gathered over more than a decade of documenting lesser-known contemporary and female-led folk customs. Concerned primarily with inclusivity and representation in the British folk arts, she is the author of the ‘Folk is a Feminist Issue’ manifesta, and creator of ‘hedge morris dancing’—a 100% invented tradition and participatory performance project for anyone who has ever wanted to dance the sun down!

Following a stint as the lead singer in BBC Folk Award-nominated act, Pilgrims' Way, Wright received a Vice Chancellor’s scholarship from Manchester School of Art for her PhD before becoming a Visiting Research Fellow in Folklore at University of Hertfordshire in 2019. Since then she has undertaken residencies for Analogue Farm and Morning Boat, Jersey, exhibited at Field System, Leeds Art Gallery, Compton Verney and Cecil Sharp House and had her work featured in Sunday Times Style, Hwaet and Tradfolk. Recent commissions and awards include from Marchmont House, A-N, Daiwa Foundation, Wild Rumpus and Meadow Arts.

Recent rites + rituals!

Recent rites + rituals!

Exhibition

‘Oss Girls

Solo exhibition | Field System, Devon | May 2024

Hobby horses and horse girls; folklore, fetish + consent…

This exhibition takes as its starting point the folk archetype of the hobby horse, drawing on customs from Cornwall, Lincolnshire and Kent.

While the traditional hobby horse is generally viewed as a carnivalesque figure of fun whose wild antics help to temporarily suspend the norms and hierarchies of everyday life, legend suggests that women who are caught under the horse’s skirts become pregnant, gesturing towards a peculiarly predatory heteronormativity.

At the same time, ‘hobby horse’ is one of several names used to disparage girls and young women with a keen interest in horses (AKA ‘horse girls’), who are bullied for their social awkwardness and presumed erotic attachment to their equine companions.

What if the hobby horse was femme? What if ‘horse girls’ were celebrated, not mocked? How might folk practices of all kinds help us to navigate changing attitudes towards gender and intimacy?

Field System, Ashburton: 1-18 May, PV 1 May, 6-9pm

Photo by Leonie Freeman

Hedge morris dancing is for those of us who don’t have, or can’t be with a group of morris siblings, on May morning, but who still feel the call to dance up the sun! 

’Join the hedge morris dancing revolution!’, Tradfolk