Castlefield Gallery Associates: Lucy Wright
Posted on 7 May 2025
This month we have asked Lucy Wright to contribute to our Castlefield Gallery Associates Spotlight series, in which current Castlefield Gallery Associates share their thoughts on what the programme offers and how it has been useful for them.
Can you tell us a little bit about your practice?
I’m an artist whose work draws on more than a decade of ongoing research into the lesser-known folk arts and traditions led by women and other marginalised people. I make sculptures, write and do performances where I insert my own female body into seasonal customs that would currently sideline or exclude it.
Folklore is having a moment right now in the arts, but I still feel there’s work to do to address the continued underrepresentation of working-class and other minoritised voices from whom the canon of folklore was largely appropriated—as well as to tackle some difficult questions from the discipline’s history and present.
To this end, I wrote the ‘Folk is a Feminist Issue’ manifesto, which calls for a more progressive and inclusive ethics of folk as the stuff we make, do and think for ourselves and its radical potential. I’m also the creator of ‘Dusking’, a participatory performance project and seasonal custom in which EVERYONE is invited to take a few minutes to mark the onset of winter with a short ‘hedge’ morris dance!
How did you hear about Castlefield Gallery Associates and why did you want to join?
I did my PhD in Manchester, a good few years ago, and I remember that on one of my first nights in the city, I attended a talk at the gallery by Amanda Ravetz. At the time, I was still convinced that I could never be an artist, as my working-class parents had told me that art wasn’t a suitable career path for ‘folks like us’. But I loved the space, and vowed that if I was ever cool enough, I’d do whatever I could to get involved there! 10 years on and I no longer live in Manchester, but I wanted to join the Associates so that I could keep in touch with the community there and access some of the brilliant talks and opportunities on offer. I’m getting loads from it — although I’m still not sure I’m 100% cool enough!
What are you looking forward to most about your coming year’s membership?
I’m really looking forward to getting more involved in the artist community at Castlefield. A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to host a workshop at the gallery—building a rushcart as part of my ‘Future Folk Archetypes’ series—and I also took some photos of myself dressed as my character, The Burry Woman in front of Kay Shah’s fantastic installation for 40 Years of the Future: Degrees of Duality.
I’ve long had an obsession with the traditional burry man custom that takes place each August in South Edinburgh and have made various attempts to embody his imagined counterpart, the burry woman. I’ve painted myself as her and stuck burdock seeds to my underwear to perform as her—but this time around I wanted to give her full disco glam, so it’s glitter pom-poms all the way. In lieu of the burry man’s lush floral staffs, I went for bejewelled ice cream cones, in honour of another of my long held preoccupations—with the giant fibre-glass foods they have outside of fast food shops and ice cream parlours in seaside towns!
Links
Website
lucywright.artImages
Banner:
- Lucy Wright, The Burry Woman’s Birthday, 2025. Background installation: Kay Shah, Degrees of Duality at Castlefield Gallery. Photo by Tilo Reifenstein.
From left to right, top to bottom:
- Lucy Wright, install shot from ‘Oss Girls at Field System, Ashburton, 2024, photo by the artist.
- Lucy Wright, ‘Straw Bear’ from Plough’d II at Art House, Wakefield, 2025, photo by Tilo Reifenstein.
- Artist photo, from Plough’d I, 2024, photo by Tilo Reifenstein.
