Lucy Wright

New digital commission for Meadow Arts RURALities programme. Watch this space for more info!

Plough Witches is a multi-site digital work that centralises female and non-binary bodies in a reinvention of the traditional ‘plough play’—a seasonal folk drama performed by men in agricultural communities.

The role of women and non-binary people has long been marginalised in the English traditional arts, creating a canon of performances—and with it, an ideal of nationhood—that is strongly male-identified. At the same time, non-male bodies are often problematised / disenfranchised in rural landscapes, felt to be simultaneously vulnerable and potentially dangerous, leading many women and non-binary people to self-limit their access to wild places, especially when alone. These effects are multiplied for those experiencing intersectional discrimination, e.g. around race and disability.

My work will take the form of a series of multi-layer digital portraits, drawing on the well-known (male-identified) ‘Wildermann’ images of Charles Fréger and combining photography and digital illustration / collage techniques. Plough plays are informal, pantomime-style performances by amateur actors depicting a battle of good versus evil—in which after a series of trials, good wins out. However, where women and non-binary people are currently excluded from existing performances, Plough Witches will emphasise women’s roles as custodians of the landscape and tradition bearers.

In an historical moment marked by immense political and environmental instability—much of which is played out in rural communities—the straightforward narrative of the plough play provides an unsatisfying fiction. In Plough Witches, the updated struggle is left unresolved—and viewers in Meadow Arts’ partner organisations could be invited to engage with the work by voting for a ‘winner’. In addition to the portraits, a series of short video interventions will ‘pop-up’ on the Meadow Arts and partner websites during the commission period, to mimic the characteristically declarative entrance of plough players (who announce themselves, ‘In comes I’ before telling their story). With the real plays currently cancelled as a result of Covid-19, this timely project uniquely ‘digitises’ (and thus sustains) the tradition for a new online audience, while egalitarianizing the story to reflect the gender and racial diversity of contemporary rural communities.

Concept images

Re-imagining calendar customs to centralise non-male bodies...