Thursday 4 July to Saturday 2 November 2024
Free entry
Weird As Folk: Tall Tales from the Northwest Exhibition
Weird as Folk threads tales from past to present, weaving a shimmering skein of stories across centuries. It is not easy to find these stories. Folklore is an oral tradition. Tales and beliefs are passed down generations and not always written in books.
Local yarns spun into cautionary tales are woven across our historic collection, which contains folk voices from the 1800s to the present day. Our books about English folklore deepen our understanding of the people, purpose and place in which we live. They describe and reflect the rituals and traditions practised across the country and can help us understand the history behind these practices. Myths and legends have different names in different regions; a ‘hob’ in the Midlands might be a ‘bogle’ in Scotland or a ‘boggart’ in Lancashire.
In Weird as Folk, the concealed is revealed in once hidden or obscure curiosities such as ‘witch bottles’ and ‘protection objects’. The oldest of these artefacts on display here is a pair of shoes from 1904, loaned by our partners at The Folklore Centre in Todmorden, which were found hidden in a local primary school.
As you wander through the exhibition, you will encounter a pageantry of famous weird folk. Among the fray you may notice characters like Will-O-The-Wisp, and Wag-at-the-Wa' presiding over marsh lands, roaring fires and bubbling cauldrons. ‘Mab’s Cross’ - a Wigan tragedy - jostles alongside the comedic mischief of Mancunian Boggarts.
Weird as Folk is a co-curated exhibition, forged in partnership with our critical friends, volunteers, researchers, authors, artists, musicians and folklorists. Contributing artists Ryan French and Lucy Wright (from September) have conjured paintings and sculptural creations that peek from above and behind bookcases. French’s epic painting Skies and Flesh, pulls ancient myth into the current day. Wright’s installation bridges the gap in folkloric representation, adding female voices and figures as expressed in her Manifesta, ‘Folk is a Feminist Issue’. Wright summarises the ‘lore of the Folk’ as:
“Folk is the stuff we make, do and think for ourselves – and the radical potential of these things.”
We invite your curiosity and contribution to the folk forest. Please share your own tales on the backs of leaves and via QR codes scattered through the displays. They will become part of the living archive and historic collection of the Portico Library.
In this project we are developing a people-centred cataloguing strategy that expands our searchable records, making items easier to find through inclusive terminology and historical context. Working with community partners, we are broadening access and perspectives on our collection, and the language we use to describe and interpret it.
The events programme has been co-created with critical friends with a range of expertise, local volunteers and global visitors. This approach has given insight into the missing voices in our collection. We aim to continue to close these gaps by offering multiple channels for audiences to interact with our collection, and shape future events and exhibitions. In 2025, we will launch the second stage of the project, focusing on our books about China and Hong Kong.
Polly-Anna Steiner, Imogen Durant, Alice Measom, Debbie Challis and Apapat J. Glynn
The Dynamic Collections Staff Team at the Portico Library
Weird as Folk forms part of the Portico’s Dynamic Collection project, which has been funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. We are grateful for their support in helping us make our collection easier to use and find.
Online Survey
If you have visited the exhibition, searched for books relating to folklore or East Asia, or attended an event, we invite you to complete our survey here.
It would really help with our evaluation for our funders and help us to improve access to the library.
As a thank you for completing it, you can also enter an online competition for £30 high street shopping vouchers by leaving your details at the end of the survey.
Associated Events
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Weird As Folk exhibition partnerships, artists, critical friends and collaborators list and links
Future Folk Archetypes
This specially commissioned trio of works imagines modern folk archetypes, embodied and present in the Portico Library, representing the diversity of folklore not currently included in the collection.
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.
Lucy Wright is an artist and researcher. Her work, which combines performance, making and socially engaged practice, often draws on her large personal archive of photographs and research gathered over more than a decade of documenting female- and queer-led folk customs. She is the author of the ‘Folk is a Feminist Issue’ manifesta and inventor of ‘hedge morris dancing’—an an inclusive and dynamic interpretation of the traditional dance for anyone who has ever wanted to dance the sun down.
https://www.lucywright.art/works/future-folk-archetypes / @lucy_j_wright