Libby Bove, Lucy Wright and Tom Platt
GUISERS
Haarlem Artspace
GUISERS, a group exhibition at Haarlem Artspace, featuring work by Libby Bove, Lucy Wright and Tom Platt. Costume, folklore and speculative ritual come together in this show, which takes its name from the seasonal tradition of ‘guising’—a form of folk performance involving disguise, play and transformation.
Libby Bove presents a vivid body of work exploring Roadside Magic—an invented belief system where ritual and mechanical labour meet. Sculptural costumes, masks and photographic tableaux conjure new seasonal customs enacted outside rural garages. Visitors are invited to wear replica outfits and take part in their own folk rite of passage in front of a backdrop depicting a real M.O.T. station in Twerton.
Lucy Wright brings a decade of research into lesser-known and often female-led traditions to bear on a practice that sits between visual art and activism. Her projects, including Dusking and Hedge Morris Dancing, invite viewers to invent and inhabit inclusive rituals of their own—turning participation, rather than preservation, into the guiding force of tradition.
Tom Platt contributes a series of grotesque-playful sculptural works made from traditional and discarded materials. These hybrid forms serve as avatars for the tensions of creative labour—between joy and commodification, revelation and disguise. Developed partly during a recent residency at PADA Studios in Portugal, his work reflects on transformation, consumerism and the agency of the inanimate.
Together, the artists of Guisers ask what happens when we invent traditions for the times we live in—playful, serious, and rooted in the shifting landscapes of belief and belonging.
1 August – 14 September 2025
Open Friday-Sunday 12-5
Haarlem Artspace, Wirksworth
