Delaine Le Bas explores identity in upcoming exhibition
Artist Delaine Le Bas will open her first solo museum show since the Turner Prize in a new exhibition titled Un-Fair-Ground at the Whitworth in Manchester, starting on 13 February, reports BritPanorama.
Le Bas, born in Worthing in 1965, reflects on her journey, stating, “I didn’t really mix much with other kids.” Having faced bullying and drawn from her heritage as a member of the British Gypsy, Romani, Roma, and Traveller people, her artistic expression has often addressed themes of identity and exclusion.
During her Turner Prize presentation in 2024, Le Bas showcased a deeply autobiographical installation that resonated with the audience, despite not winning the award. The work drew on personal narratives and family history, significantly shaped by her late grandmother, whose illness coincided with the initial presentation of this work in Vienna in 2023.
In her upcoming exhibition, Le Bas will explore these themes further, integrating existing works, including a mural created for the 2024 Glastonbury Festival, alongside new pieces inspired by the Whitworth’s permanent collection. The multi-part installation aims to engage visitors in a dialogue about identity and representational fairness.
“I’m always excited to get in a space – I work from home, I don’t have a studio, so I suddenly feel like I can do anything,” Le Bas says, expressing her anticipation for the installation process. The exhibition will incorporate elements of her early training in fashion and textiles, emphasizing the transformative power of fabric in creating immersive environments.
Le Bas has selected various works from the Whitworth collection, including pieces by William Blake and Paula Rego, which hold personal significance and challenge traditional hierarchies within art. She describes her approach as an effort to make a “fair piece of ground for all the works,” reflecting on the implications of the term “outsider art” and advocating for inclusivity in exhibition spaces.
Informed by curator Clémentine Deliss’s work, Le Bas aims to rethink how cultural objects are presented and labelled. “We need to think about things like labelling. Obviously for me, boxes and labelling are a slight problem,” she notes, highlighting the complexities surrounding identity and representation in art.
Le Bas’s practice is characterised by spontaneity, allowing external factors like weather to influence her artistic process. As a well-travelled artist, she embraces her nomadic lifestyle, echoing her grandmother’s sentiments on travel and community among the nomadic populations.
Delaine Le Bas: Un-Fair-Ground is at the Whitworth, Manchester, from 13 February to 31 May.
