The Bourdon Street Chippy | Lyndsey Ingram
Sometimes popular things are good! Speaking of which, I really enjoyed my visit to the Bourdon Street Chippy, a deeply people-pleasing summer show put on by Lyndsey Ingram in their Mayfair space. Despite it being up a quiet backstreet and having very limited opening hours - standard fare for a commercial gallery - it was still rammed with tourists and families.
Understandably. The gallery rooms have been transformed into an amazingly convincing old school fish and chip shop: the kind with a glass-fronted counter, formica-topped tables and a noticeboard. With a twist, though: in there - fish, chips, condiments, signage - was hand stitched in felt. The overall effect was like an interactive Martin Parr photo. Except everywhere you looked there were cuddly toys. It was adorable.
The artist Lucy Sparrow is behind all this: she did a similar installation at Lynsey Ingram in 2021, except that time it was a chemist’s shop. I hope she has an Anish Kapoor-scale studio to do a lot of the stitching for her, given the incredible amount of time all these things must have taken to make. (My favourite detail - everything that had ever been alive, like potatoes and codfish, also had hand-stitched eyes on each piece.)
I’m sure she’s making bank off it anyway. A felt bottle of Sarson’s vinegar costs £60. Some of the signage is into the hundreds. When I visited, there was a queue at the counter to buy stuff. My eye was on the autographed picture of Robbie from EastEnders (hand stitched in felt of course), who is the most famous person to have gone to my secondary school.
We all left with a smile, anyway.
The Bourdon Street Chippy is at Lyndsey Ingram (London). 01 August - 14 September 2025