Delaine Le Bas – Witch Hunt
Opening reception: 20th January 2011 including a new Live Performance:
‘Trashimos Si Ruzlipen, Chavvy’
by Delaine Le Bas,
Exhibition dates: 21st January 2011 – 13th February 2011
Thur – Sun 12.00 – 6.00pm or by appointment
Closing event: 11th February 6 –
Book Launch and Film
The works of Delaine Le Bas are asking a question, one that holds a particular reference to Delaine’s own Cultural Heritage.
‘Distorted Ideologies and contemporary colonialist language continue to this day to extinguish the true inheritance of The Romany people,’ Delaine’s work unashamedly confronts the rhetorical benchmarking by those who have chosen to define our understanding of ‘The Real Gypsies’ but ‘This is not a lifestyle choice, it is real life steeped in a cultural history that spans time as well as continents, and that has a language which maintains roots from its original homeland.’
Witchcraft was built around words: as much dependent on lost ways of speaking as on particular incantations. A witch, like a Gypsy, was known by the words she spoke, and for centuries this has provoked unmatched levels of hysteria, excitement and persecution.
‘Witch Hunt’ is a project comprising a meticulous installation of sculpture, painting, embroidery, textiles, performance and film. For Campbell Works, Delaine will create a new incarnation of this work reflecting the religious dimension of the Witch Hunt, and including previously unseen work which explores the role of language in identifying the ‘other’.
The intricate detail of Delaine’s embroidery and textiles and the high level of attention to every corner of the gallery will form the locus for an examination of what it feels like to be on the ‘outside’ when you may well be on the ‘inside’. Mythology and truth wrapped together so tightly and delicately that they form a new membrane of
The work shown at Campbell Works is at the invitation of Neil Taylor and Harriet Murray, to provide a platform and extension for dialogue, around the ideas and questions raised by Delaine’s recent installations of Witch Hunt at Aspex (Portsmouth), Chapter (Cardiff) and Context (Derry).
Delaine Le Bas’s work was shown in ‘Paradise Lost’, The First Roma Pavilion at Venice Biennale in 2007. In addition to the Which Hunt shows at Aspex gallery in Portsmouth, Chapter Gallery in Cardiff, and Context Gallery in Derry, recent international exhibitions have included shows in, Hungary, Germany, Spain, Israel, France, Austria and the USA,
Delaine acknowledges the Support of Arts Council England and is represented by Galleria Sonia Rosso, Turin and Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch, Berlin. For full CV please contact Campbell Works.