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Letty McHugh

West Yorkshire
I’m an artist and writer based in West Yorkshire. My work centres around the universality of personal experience: which is the fancy way of saying I’m interested in people, their stories, and why they matter.

In 2021 I received a Developing Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England, and went on to develop a self-published collection of images, poetry, and lyric essays which won The Barbellion Prize for Literature in 2023. My large-scale installation ‘Anchorage’ was shown at Attenborough Art Gallery from October 2022 to January 2023. In 2023, I was commissioned to work on a new artists’ book by the Brontë Parsonage Museum, which launched the Brontë Festival of Women’s Writing last autumn. I was also commissioned by Bradford Council to develop two large-scale lighting installations to be displayed in Keighley Town Centre for the BD is LIT festival, some of these installations are currently still on display. 


In 2024 I am using Viking traditions of narrative tapestries and oral storytelling to create audio works with funding from an Arts Council England Project Grant.

 

When Keighley's new Mechanics Institute opened in 1825 it was with the aim that 'latent genius may be excited and prompted into action, the dormant abilities of individuals, yet unknown, may be roused, brought to light, for the general good.' At the opening Rev Drury gave a speech in which he expressed hopes "that brilliant talents might be called forth". When I read the account of the opening in the Keighley News a few months ago I felt that the speech had the potential to become a new…

Let Brilliant Talents Shine Forth (BD Is Lit)

Book of Hours: An Almanac for the Seasons of the Soul

Anchorage

Watches for an Ordinary Day

You Are Standing in History

Early summer 2021 I was walking home one evening when I saw a pile of stuff someone had clearly left out for the scrap man. In the middle of the pile was this beautiful old Hand-wound sewing machine. It broke my heart to see it abandoned in the gutter, so I brought it home. 

The machine had obviously been living at the back of a garage or a garden shed for years. Everything that should’ve moved had seized up and everything that should stay still was worryingly easy to move.  In the…

The Unknown Sewing Machine

We've Got Joy

The Centre of the Known Universe

Seaworthy Vessel

This is Your Inheritance

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