Lucy Wright

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 nearly a decade of documenting female and queer-led folk customs. Many of her projects reference and subvert traditional arts—both material and performed—to explore the contestations of gender and class in the archive, and recurrent themes in her works include female solitude, the relationships between the body and the landscape, and self-determined arts and community-making, outside of mainstream institutions and frameworks.

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 (2014) before becoming a Visiting Research Fellow in Folklore at University of Hertfordshire in 2019. She has undertaken residencies for Analogue Farm (2022) and Morning Boat, Jersey (2018/19) and has recently exhibited at serf, Leeds Art Gallery, Compton Verney and Cecil Sharp House. Commissions and awards include from Marchmont House (2023), A-N (2023), Daiwa Foundation (2023) and Meadow Arts (2021).