Lucy Wright

Lucy Wright

About

Artist and researcher, Lucy Wright lives in an agricultural community in West Yorkshire and makes work responding to rural themes. Growing up in a working-class family in rural Lincolnshire, her practice has long been concerned with exploring and re-imagining historical ‘folk’ practices to better represent contemporary societal makeup and challenging limiting stereotypes about rural communities.

Much of Wright’s work has sought to address the under-representation of women, for example celebrating the threatened ecological handicraft of ‘harestailing’ (Jersey Heritage), the female-led history of carnival morris dancing (EFDSS / Airspace Gallery) and the short-lived popularity of ‘hand-blinging’ (Bank Street Arts).

Lucy Wright heads the Social Art Library for Axis, a project to build the first artist-led archive and resource bank for and about socially engaged practice. She has explored the intersections of social art and ethnography, publishing her first book, 21st Century Folk Art: Social art and/as research, in 2019. She writes articles and book chapters, and has co-authored two reports, Beyond the Gallery (2015) and From Network to Meshwork (2020) with Amanda Ravetz. Wright edits Social Works? Open journal and is a co-founder of Social Art Publications, the publishing wing of the artist-led group Social Art Network.

 

Image: Lucy Wright, Plough Witches. Meadow Arts digital commission 2021.