Like the party-hungry girls who frenetically brave the snowy streets of Leeds and Newcastle clad in little more than a Fashion Nova dress, the magician orchestrates chaos. She often serves as a catalyst within the hero’s journey, propelling things into action. The magician possesses the power of transformation, invoking altered states and opening up an illusory realm which can bring about enlightenment as well as deception. In her exhibition „Atter,“ Hannah Rose Stewart explores Northern England’s nightlife as a zone of magic. The exhibition’s title references an antiquated term for a poisonous potion in medieval england, nodding to the historicity of the archetype. The show includes three new sculptures that build on the artist’s engagement with neoliberal psychogeographies and incorporate elements found within the North’s urban landscape, as well as found footage of  ghostly dwellers.

There’s a distinct imagery associated with Northern England’s party districts: intoxicated individuals clad in neon outfits wander around neighbourhoods densely packed with clubs and bars that offer special deals on low-cost drinks in aposematic colours. While this visual language can also be found in mass party tourism hotspots such as Malia or Lloret de Mar, it takes on a peculiar quality within the region’s hostile climate. From Newcastle’s Diamond Strip to Manchester’s Golden Mile, Blue Lagoons, Sex on the Beach an copious amounts of pints blur out the gloomy cold. Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Nottingham have some of the highest densities of pubs and bars per square kilometre, as well as the highest rates of alcohol-related injuries. This phenomenon is a spectre from the past: In 19th-century Britain, the cities of the North were important industrial hubs, and their urban structure centred around the many workers who enjoyed drinking in abundance once their shifts ended. When the heavy industry left Northern England, it left behind an infrastructure of bars, beer houses and a deeply ingrained drinking culture. This culture, combined with  economic struggles, unemployment and an overall sense of being left behind, festered the growing problem of alcoholism. In his writings on hauntology, Mark Fisher describes the phenomenon as a persistent return of the past, with elements of bygone eras coming to inhabit the present like ghosts, impeding genuine cultural progression. Beset by their recent history, Northern English cities are torn between public health and safety concerns and the money brought about by alcohol licensing and party tourism.

The decisive protagonists of the region’s notorious nightlife are the dolled-up girls, the vivid colours of their short bodycon dresses, high heels and tiny handbags beacons within the foggy night. A YouTube search for „North England nightlife“ returns various videos that document these women’s nocturnal wanders. There is a strange allure to how they navigate their environments. Their outfits are often at odds with the outside temperature, their intoxication stripping them of the inhibitions that come with being in public space, begetting them to take off their shoes or sit down on the street. Sometimes they’re strutting, but more often, they’re stumbling, leaning on their friends or against desultory urban architecture. The videographers eerily appear to be lurking on unsuspecting women – like the men in the comment sections, they are gawking from a distance. But the videos’ uncanniness goes beyond creep: the girls are only ever depicted in transit, erring the streets without a discernible destination, roaming the same routes every weekend:, a ritual akin to a haunting. The past no longer dies – it accumulates, its collective weight pressing down with a heaviness that makes it impossible to move forward. And so night after night, the girls swallow up the city, tumbling along trodden paths, a drunken haze obscuring visions of futures that never came to pass.