DELAINE LE BAS

Her work spans objects, environments, textiles, costumes, and performances, occupying the intersection of the personal and the political, in dialogue with questions about land, movement, gender, and discrimination.

At the centre of the exhibition is The Goddess, a figure Le Bas envisions as a connective thread between her past and current practices, and through which all other works in the show are linked. The sculpture combines newly handmade elements with found objects, incorporating collected textiles, handkerchiefs, and vintage fabrics. As Le Bas writes: “The Goddess is a call to action in the times we now find ourselves, their heart visible through their fragile torso, their skirt graffitied to reflect where we are now.”

Also on view is a new series of works in Murano glass, made in collaboration with Studio Beregno in Venice.Produced in editions of two, the works retain visible differences between each pair — a quality Le Bas has embraced as integral to her broader inquiry into individuality and reproduction. “The alchemy of the process is full of surprises,” she has noted. Drawing on the iconography of witches and outsider figures, the works, in her words, “conjure my vision and experience of England while existing as a being at the intersection of a society that still views many as the ‘other.’”

The exhibition title, Leap, describes a movement that is at once backward and forward. As Le Bas shifts across scale, media, and modes of presentation, her practice remains grounded in both communal and personal histories.

”This show is a Leap. I’m leaping back, and with my collaborators, we are that Leap of Leopards that are hard to spot sometimes, but when you do see us, you will not forget.”

“In her words, Delaine has been ‘kicking around’ Europe with her hangings and constructions for years (including the first Roma Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2007), with a recent surge of interest following her expansive yet intimate 2024 Tramway show in Glasgow and subsequent Turner Prize nomination. She is renowned for her performances and installations such as Witch Hunt (touring Europe since 2009, courtesy of Foundation Kai Dikhas in Berlin) which attack and pick at issues of misrepresentations and misapprehensions of identity and culture. Delaine grew up in a Romani family and suffered extensive bullying for her ‘otherness’ as a child. That formed both a carapace and a masking technique, a camouflage of visual, fashion extravagance and elegance that naturally echoed into her artwork. She has also seen herself as the ‘ungrateful guest at the dinner table’, but her exuberant energy has now gathered seemingly unstoppable, joyful momentum. Leap includes both historical and new work, placing them in new situations with works for walls and plinths. The artist’s wish for Leap is to encourage us to identify and confront institutional pacification, to question, to embrace joy, and to ’jump right out of the 21st Century as fast as we can, in order to create an environment in which we can truly run wild’.” – John Marchant, 2026.

Delaine Le Bas (b. 1965, Worthing) lives and works in Worthing, West Sussex, collaborating with her partner Lincoln Cato.

In Spring 2026, the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, presented Un-Fair-Ground, a solo exhibition of Delaine Le Bas. In 2024, she was nominated for the Turner Prize, which was presented at the Tate Britain, London. She was nominated for her exhibition at Succession, Vienna, Incipit Vita Nova. Here Begins The New Life/A New Life Is Beginning (2023). Further solo exhibitions include +Fabricating My Own Myth – Red Threads & Silver Needles, Newcastle Contemporary Art, Newcastle, UK (2025), Delainia: 17071965 Unfolding, Tramway, Glasgow, Scotland (2024); House of Le Bas, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2023); and St Sara Kali George, Worthing Museum and Art Gallery, Worthing, UK (2021).

She was one of sixteen artists who formed ‘Paradise Lost’ at the First Roma Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 2007.

In 2015, she created the ongoing installation and performance work ‘Romani Embassy’. Her works were shown in Prague Biennale in 2005 & 2007, the Venice Biennale in 2007, 2017, and 2023, the Gwangju Biennale in 2012, Critical Contemplations at Tate Modern in 2017, and the ANTI Athens Biennale in 2018.