Isobel Featherston-Lardeux

A collection of photographs of cars with custom licence plates, spotted in London

Isobel grew up in Southern Germany before moving to London to pursue her interest in fine art. Her background is in painting and printmaking, worldbuilding and storytelling through imagery of the yeti, Mars-like landscapes, and colourful blocks.

She completed her foundation at the Royal Drawing School in 2018 and her BA (Hons) at Wimbledon University of the Arts London in 2021.

Her current practice takes place outside the studio, and on the streets of London, where she analyses cultural and social patterns through custom license plates, which she photographs and showcases on her Instagram @londonhotrides.

She welcomes any submissions and hopes to create an ethnographic map of London through these plates.

6RDUAT3

8UY AR7

S34 RCH

B19 W1N

Map of London with locations for custom licence plates

I look for secrets and patterns everywhere.

My main interest within and outside of my practice is feminism, and I try to use feminism as a model for thinking and a framework for seeing the world. It allows me to ask questions about why things are the way they are and how this came to be and points towards both injustices in the system as well as paths towards improvement.

Through this critical lens I began to look at cars as symbolism for our culture.

I took a year to walk around London and to look at licence plates, trying to see words, patterns, and trends. A car can say everything about a person: what their background is, their occupation, their perceived image of themselves, their taste, their family status, their dreams, and their driving speed. Each of these elements come together to form a cultural landscape describing taste, social mobility, and conspicuous consumption.

It is not uncommon for plates to cost upwards of £20 000, and even more common for them to be about drugs, sex, bosscore, and power.

I want to dig this culture up and lay it bare for you to see the connections between everything.