May 6

May 6 Bourdon Street Chemist - an extraordinary installation

I’m not sure I’d normally think of, or refer to, a visit to an art gallery as an adventure, but considering I hadn’t been to any kind of cultural event for over 15 months, and considering I had to get there on….a….bus… for the first time in an equal age, my excursion to the extraordinary art installation, the Bourdon Street Chemist, definitely felt (there’s a pun in there that we’ll get to) as if it qualified as one.

The exterior of the Bourdon Street Chemist at the Lyndsey Ingram gallery

The walls of the Lyndsey Ingram gallery in an exclusive mews tucked behind London’s Oxford Street, are usually hung with contemporary prints and paper works. But from April 19th until Saturday, May 8th, (yes I know that means you almost certainly won’t be able to see it for yourself, sorry about that. But as you’ll find out further down, it’s one of a number of equally astonishing installations the artist, Lucy Sparrow, has created, so I’m sure there will be another opportunity to see her incredible work another time. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Back to the adventure in hand) it has been transformed into a remarkable immersive installation.

As its name suggests, the Bourdon Street Chemist, is a fully life-size, fully stocked, fully jaw-dropping chemist shop where every item, from the bottles of shampoo, to the packets of razors, to the lipsticks and mascaras on the beauty display, to the posters on the walls, the magazines and cards in the racks and the home Covid test sets, are made entirely of felt (see I told you I’d get to the pun).

Inside the shelves are filled with felt products

There’s a ridiculously realistic make-up display

The rack of felt cards is surrounded by health related posters

Close up of two of the 15000 products on the felt-lined shop shelves

And more than that, every one of the over 15000 items is for sale. Just pick what you want from the felted shelves - a pregnancy test maybe? Or a bottle of Chanel perfume? Or maybe some cotton wool - take it to the counter where the white-coated assistant* will present you with a felt prescription in lieu of a receipt. (With prices that start at £30 and rise to the hundreds, these are, understandably, rather more costly than their real-life counterparts).

Everything in the installation is for sale. Cotton wool anyone?

Artist Lucy, who originally hails from Bath, says she created the shop to highlight the work done by local chemists, which became all the more important during the pandemic.

Artist Lucy Sparrow, in her latest dazzling installation

"The local chemist shop,” she explains “transports me to a very unique and different place. Overlaid on the flu remedies, make-up and personal hygiene products is a whole level of intimacy not apparent in any other high street shop. There is something so intensely intimate in sharing your personal – and often embarrassing – ailments with a stranger.

"But because that stranger is wearing a white coat you feel safe and trust them with secrets you wouldn't tell your best friend. You don't question their expertise; you do as you are told, take the pill, reassured that all will be well. During the pandemic, chemists became even more important in the community and I am really proud to celebrate them in The Bourdon Street Chemist."

This certainly is a celebration unlike any other. (Lucy’s intense attention to detail even includes recreating the slight whiff of TCP that all chemist shops seem to have). But it has its artistic routes in 2014 when she emphatically announced her arrival on the contemporary art scene with a similarly life-size, fully stocked, felt-made corner shop, which had fans queuing around the block.

This is her in her first felt world installation - a fully stocked corner shop

She followed that with more superlative-prompting felted installations, including a wittily and wickedly subversive sex shop she called Madame Roxy’s Erotic Emporium

Madame Rosy’s Sex Emporium complete with felt packets of condoms and felt handcuffs

a Convenience Store she exhibited in New York

Felt fruit and veg were on offer in Lucy’s US installation - the Convenience Store

and Triple Art Bypass – an interactive exhibit in which Lucy performed live-felt surgery to huge crowds at the annual US art fair.

The felt stocked operating theatre where Lucy performed live felt surgery at the annual US Art Fair

The Bourdon Street Chemist (branded with her self-coined NFS - National Felt Service - logo) is her seventh major installation. There are sure to be more.

Find out more about Lucy and her work on her website where you can also buy some of her exquisitely detailed pieces.

*I wish I’d realised that the white coated assistant serving behind the counter was actually Lucy herself. So many questions I’d loved to have asked her!