Join us at Enter Gallery on June 30th from 6-8pm for Ghost Town - the latest solo show from one of Brighton’s most well-loved artists, Haus of Lucy - an artist known for tongue-in-cheek artworks alive with razor-sharp wit and social criticism.
Ghost Town is Lucy’s exploration of the death of the high street. It explores the knock-on effect of its demise on our sense of connection and community, and asks, without a central place to meet and mingle, what will become of us?
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In today’s blog, we’re chatting to Haus of Lucy to hear more about the inspirations behind the show, and the pieces featured. So, take our hand, and let’s go for a stroll through the Ghost Town of Lucy’s imagination…
Next stop: Ghost Town
Traditionally, the high street has been the major hub of any town. A place for people to congregate, to source their wares, and to enjoy a chat with local shop keepers and fellow punters.
Alas, shopping habits have changed. While once people would pop down the shops, nowadays, people are more likely to shop online or to head to big supermarkets and superstores on the outskirts of town. Sadly, this means the humble high street has died a death, and along with it, so has the opportunity for people to get to know their neighbours. Lucy tells us:
“I go to a lot of towns looking for figurines and I’ve started to notice that the high streets in these places are becoming very unloved and neglected. A lot of businesses that people relied on before – the typical butcher, baker and candlestick maker - don’t really have a place any more. High streets are dying. Across the country, they’re being taken over by the same chains. It’s becoming virtually impossible to distinguish one town from another. The personality is literally being stripped from our high streets with communities being erased.”
Shut up shop
Let’s commence our tour in the place that inspired the show – the high street. In Ghost Town, Lucy offers a more modern depiction of the kinds of businesses that now populate these central thoroughfares. After all, who really needs a florist, or a greengrocers, when you can have all your needs met at Ladbrokes, Poundland and Greggs?
Ghost Town’s high street is crafted from a charmingly chintzy array of vintage ceramic shopfronts, cottages, biscuit barrels and teapots. Lucy tell us: “I’ve come along and done to these original ceramics what’s actually being done to high streets across the country.”
Walk along the Ghost Town high street and you’ll find all the new usual suspects. Line the stomach with fast food favourites like McDonald’s, Subway and KFC, grab a bargain at Scope, enjoy a tipple courtesy of Wetherspoons or All Bar One, and then, if you’re in the market for some entertainment, you can always swing by Admiral to play on the slots. Lucy tells us:
“I was in Burgess Hill and I felt like I was walking down a high street that I’d created because every one of these shop fronts was there. It was like I’d shrunk and walked straight in to the Ghost Town of my own creation.”
Lucy’s shop fronts are accompanied by a selection of crockery, adapted to comment on the realities of modern life, including everything from polluted waterways, to the threat of war.
Park Life
Just around the corner from Lucy’s high street, you’ll find the local park, alive with the town’s most colourful characters. Lucy tells us:
“These figurines represent the residents of Ghost Town. I’ve taken a lot of artistic licence of course, I have babies drinking alcohol for example, but that’s me. I like to take the piss and push things as far as I can go.”
The show features 12 figurines, each a perfect example of the juxtaposition between humour and horror that we see across her oeuvre. In addition to an inebriated chap with a traffic cone on his head and a woman playing bingo in the park when she should be working, Lucy also explores the darker elements that you’d expect to find in every community.
“There’s a little girl with baskets full of the drugs that she’s selling, which although outwardly funny it’s actually about the issue of county lines. It needs addressing, particularly in these smaller towns and villages where there isn’t much to do and there’s no sense of community. It makes it easier for young people to be preyed upon and exploited by older drug dealers with a lot of influence and money.”
Prints of Darkness
More of Lucy’s Ghost Town residents will be watching over the exhibition from the walls, observing the action from afar. Most of the folk Lucy depicts are captured in their homes, whether relaxing in a pair of unicorn slippers, or enjoying a packet of Monster Munch.
In this series of original pieces, each framed in beautiful ornate frames, Lucy continues her exploration of the effects of isolation on Ghost Town residents who are longing for a friend.
Loneliness is one of the largest health concerns faced by modern society. In the UK, young people are found to be lonelier than the elderly and middle-aged, which is stark given that 50% of those older adults say that the TV is their main companion.
“People might pass away in their homes and because they don’t know their neighbours, no one is looking out for them. I don’t have children, it could possibly happen to me! We need to find ways to reconnect.”
One example of Lucy’s works exploring this issue is pictured above - an outwardly amusing piece of a woman reading Reader’s Digest in a greasy spoon café. Look a little closer and the artwork is permeated with a sense of melancholy, and is named Tea for One because she has no one to have a cup of tea with.
Tea Time
Speaking of tea, another facet of the exhibition is realistic cuppas created from vintage Beryl Ware – a popular post-war crockery, that Lucy explains, “is synonymous with church halls, jumble sales, school meetings and cheese and wine nights.”
“It’s been discontinued now but it screams community. For me these cups and saucers represent connection and communication, and the power of sharing a cup of tea and a biscuit with a friend.”
While Ghost Town is undeniably depressing, Lucy masterfully offers a playful take that makes us consider how bad things might get if we don’t take steps to figure out how to rebuild this sense of community. Speaking of how we turn things around, Lucy tells us:
“I don’t have the answers. We can’t just cut the lines to the internet and think that things will miraculously recover. There are some places I’ve been where I’ve noticed the high street shops have been taken over by artistic collaborative efforts. I think that’s the way forward – let’s lower rates and rents so that creative people can move into these spaces and actually utilise them. Hopefully that will bring people back to the high street.”
RSVP here to secure your ticket to Ghost Town.
