The history of folklore has a representation issue. Folk collectors in the nineteenth and early-twentieth century often overlooked or disregarded traditions associated with women and other marginalized people and privileged rural areas over urban ones as the sites of ‘authentic’ folk practices. The industrial northwest, in particular, was neglected by scholars despite being home to a rich and unique folk culture.

The three works in the series draw on and reimagine existing folk customs and characters as gender-flipped and manifestly 21st-century beings. The pneumatically foliate Garland Queen borrows from various ‘Jack-in-the-Green’ celebrations held across the UK on May 1st as well as the eponymous Garland Day in Castleton, Derbyshire. Made with more than 300 leaves and flowers handcrafted from holographic fabrics more often associated with carnival performers, she rides atop a bedazzled mobility scooter, pointing towards the continued lack of positive disability representation in the English folk canon. 

The cheerfully grotesque Impette, rendered in ceramic and felt, takes inspiration from the Lincoln Imp, a medieval carving found in the Angel Chapel of Lincoln Cathedral, nodding to the artist’s birth city while also sporting the so-called ‘Scouse-brow’ of her long-time home region. 

Finally, the duelling hobby horses, Pink ‘Oss and Blue ’Oss are based on guising customs in the southwest of England—particularly the Padstow ‘Obby ‘Oss—reimagined as fierce, feminist warriors.