Lucy Sparrow

Don't Be So Shellfish

2018

Felt artist Lucy Sparrow is one of the most exciting and original artists working in the UK today. Her practice is quirky yet subversive, luring the audience in with her soft, tactile, colourful felt creations before hitting them hard with her comment on subjects from the demise of the traditional high street to censorship in pornography. She took the art world by storm in Summer 2014 with the opening of her fully stocked felt Cornershop installation in London’s East End. With queues around the block and wall to wall media coverage, the installation was both a commercial and critical success. Warmongery, a controversial sell-out installation exploring the issues around gun control and mental health followed in May 2015 and in October 2015, Madame Roxy’s Erotic Emporium opened its doors in the back streets of London’s Soho, showcasing the artist’s complete commitment to her artistic vision, recreating an entire sex shop in glorious technicolour felt, including a fully working, animated felt peep show. In 2016, the BBC commissioned Lucy to recreates the Crown Jewels in felt, to celebrate HRH The Queen’s official 90th birthday. In May 2017, Lucy undertook her first solo show in the US, opening The Convenience Store, a New York bodega stocked with 9,000 felted artworks. Scheduled to run for a month, the store was an instant hit, selling out in just over two weeks to a constant stream of art lovers, most of whom had queued for an hour to visit the store. The bodega dominated the NYC art scene, appearing in coverage everywhere from the New York Times to the massive TV screens on Times Square. December 2017 saw Lucy bringing the felt back to London as part of Selfridges ‘Gift for London’ Christmas campaign, and after a four year hiatus from the capital Lucy returns in 2021 with her latest exhibition – ‘Bourdon Street Chemist‘. Lucy’s work has been shown in galleries from London to Los Angeles, and at international art fairs including Art Basel, Scope Miami and the New York Affordable Art Fair. Lucy Sparrow lives in a felt cave in the South of England UK, with her companion Basil.