Staffordshire St presents The Wicker Arms

 

Inspired by a fascination with folk horror, curatorial platforms ha.lf and the icing room come together to transform the space at Staffordshire St into an artist-inspired pub and immersive exhibition. Incorporating work from 20 artists, The Wicker Arms materially explores ideas around community, through which we refocus narratives of belonging. The suggestion of folk horror adds an edge to this narrative, where alternative realities creep to the surface, as a possible manifestation of a collective (un)conscious. Indeed, folk horror invites us to reimagine the pub, upend its more traditional associations, and reclaim it as a third space. If The Wicker Arms is haunted by The Wicker Man (dir. Robin Hardy, 1973), it also gestures towards wider craft practices, landscape, and folklore. The tension between a nostalgic past, and a troubling present, bubbles to the surface through the show.

 

Folk horror is difficult to define, but for us creates space for a suspended reality that disrupts the status quo. The exhibition re-contextualises the rural isolation of folk horror by bringing it into the urban landscape and pub environment, to allow space for more diverse voices to thrive. It investigates ways to site inside within outside, creating thresholds that must be crossed and re-crossed. Drawing on the history of the public house, we consider its status as a third space and claim it as the commons. Entering the pub there is the sense that eyes are peering at you from the walls, pub signs creak, creatures litter tables, jostling amongst more recognisable pub memorabilia. The outside area suggests a woodland shelter haunted by other ghostly presences. Still, everyone is welcome, until the bell is rung to call time.

 

Participating Artists: Milly Aburrow, Haydn Albrow, Henrietta Armstrong, Isobel Atacus, Hannah Bays,  Camilla Bliss, Flora Bradwell, Emma Carlow, Charlie Chesterman, Boudicca Paloma, Laura Copsey, Denise Hickey, Paul Kindersley, Kenji Lim, Brighid Lowe, Lindsey Mendick, Eleanor McLean, Taryn O’Reilly, Heidi Pearce, Sophie Popper, Anna Sebastian, Jesse Warby

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This exhibition will be the centrepiece of our annual Festival of Community 2025: a collaborative programme of workshops, events, exhibitions and drop-ins that will celebrate our neighbourhood and the communities that fill its streets. Exploring notions of community, place and belonging, Staffordshire St will become a locus for playful creativity and celebratory knowledge sharing.

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Leading image: Boudicca Paloma