Lucy Wright was selected for our StudioBook artist development course in 2021, with us providing ongoing mentoring and artist professional development support since.
Lucy Wright is an artist based in Leeds, UK. Her work, which combines painting and socially-engaged practice, sits at the intersection of folk(lore) and place, often using as source material the large personal archive of photographs and research she has gathered over nearly a decade of documenting female and queer-led folk customs. Many of her projects reference and subvert traditional practices to comment on contemporary issues, from migration to climate change, and she is interested in the role art might play in creating new, more inclusive traditions of care for people and the environment.
Wright received a Vice Chancellor’s scholarship from Manchester School of Art for her practice PhD (2014) and is a Visiting Research Fellow at University of Hertfordshire. She has undertaken residencies for Analogue Farm (2022), Morning Boat (2018/19) and AIRSPACE (2015) and had solo shows at The Bug (2022), Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery (2021), Lancashire Encounter (2021) and Cecil Sharp House (2017). Her work has been commissioned by Meadow Arts and Leeds Piano Festival, and shown at Compton Verney, NNContemporary and AIR Gallery amongst other places. Recent talks and consultancy include for Creative Folkestone, Art House Worcester Littleborough Arts Festival and UNESCO Creative Cities.
In 2018 she published her first book, 21st Century Folk Art with Social Art Publications and in 2021, she launched the ‘Folk is a Feminist Issue’ manifesta: www.folkisfeminist.com/manifesta.