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Manchester's Whitworth Art Gallery is about to unveil Un-Fair-Ground, a major new exhibition by Delaine Le Bas and her first solo museum show since being nominated for the Turner Prize in 2024. Across the Whitworth’s special exhibition galleries, Le Bas will stage a fully immersive, all-encompassing mixed-media installation bringing together painting, sculpture, film, performance and scenography.
Drawing directly on the Whitworth’s collection, the exhibition sees more than 20 works - spanning 200 years and a wide range of media - reselected, reworked and radically reframed by Le Bas. Embedded within an improvisational and high-energy environment, collection works are activated anew, shifting how they are seen, felt and understood within the expansive language of Le Bas’s practice.
The exhibition is informed by the idea of the metabolic museum, a concept developed by curator and thinker Clémentine Deliss, which calls for a rethinking of how museum collections operate, circulate and generate meaning. Through feminist magic, emancipatory ritual and non-linear thinking, Le Bas disrupts institutional logics and transforms the original meanings of works ranging from William Blake’s The Ancient of Days to pieces from the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection. The result is a space that resists hierarchy, embraces intuition and foregrounds under-represented voices.
Un-Fair-Ground unfolds across four interlinked sections, combining new and existing works. A large-scale witch house installation anchors the exhibition, incorporating a bespoke wallpaper design made in response to the Whitworth’s internationally significant wallpaper collection. At the centre, a stage-set structure creates a dynamic, double-sided performance space, positioning live action, ritual and encounter at the heart of the gallery.
New works by Le Bas sit in dialogue with key collection pieces by artistic precursors and peers including Madge Gill and Ana Maria Pacheco, reflecting her sustained engagement with magic, folklore and witchcraft. Also included is Un-Fair-Ground, the monumental mural created for Glastonbury Festival 2024, which will be shown for the first time in a gallery context.
Collaboration is central to the project. Le Bas has invited Sarah Lee and Leslie Thompson - artists from the brilliant Venture Arts, the Manchester-based visual arts organisation supporting learning disabled artists - to work with her on the exhibition.
Delaine Le Bas said: “I have been able to select works from the Whitworth Collection which speak to and inspire me to share as part of my installation. Visitors to the gallery will have a new experience of how they see works displayed - embedded within the installation - and encounter works they might not know from the collection.
"A particular drawing I am fascinated by, for example, is A Witch with a Brand by John Hamilton Mortimer. This collaboration has opened many possibilities for my work through ongoing curatorial conversations and how I engage with the museum as an artist. It’s a very involved, intricate untangling of formality through a residency approach and ‘radical operation’, working with costume, wallpaper, print, drawing, painting and sculpture. I’m excited to build spaces within spaces, create new performances and invite local artists to engage directly with the installation.”
Professor Sook-Kyung Lee, Director of the Whitworth, said: “Un-Fair-Ground is a powerful and timely exploration of identity, belonging and the resilience of lived experience. Delaine Le Bas’s singular vision invites us to rethink what an art gallery can be - challenging how collections are displayed, whose voices are centred and how stories are told. Her deep engagement with the Whitworth’s collection creates a space that is both critically charged and genuinely welcoming. We are proud to support an artist whose work expands the possibilities of creativity, collaboration and care.”
Valentin Diakonov, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Whitworth, added: “We are extremely happy to follow Delaine Le Bas’s lead in reimagining the Whitworth’s collections in ways that foreground female artists and underrepresented communities through the transformative power of magic and non-linear thinking. Her commitment to social and political justice exemplifies a practice that builds inclusive, poetic narratives for the future.”
About Delaine Le Bas
Delaine Le Bas (b. 1965, Worthing, UK) studied at St Martin’s School of Art, London. A practising artist since 1988, she works across fabric, film, performance, painting, photography and sculpture, creating large-scale immersive installations.
She was one of sixteen artists who formed Paradise Lost at the First Roma Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2007. With her late husband, artist Damian Le Bas (1963–2017), she created the installations Safe European Home? and Frontier De Luxe, and collaborated on stage design, costume and text for Roma Armee at the Maxim Gorki Theatre, Berlin (2017).
In 2015, Le Bas initiated the ongoing installation and performance project Romani Embassy. Her work has been shown at the Prague Biennale (2005, 2007), Venice Biennale (2007, 2017, 2023), Gwangju Biennale (2012), Critical Contemplations at Tate Modern (2017), and the ANTI Athens Biennale (2018). She has participated in all Berlin Herbstsalons, most recently in 2025.
Recent projects include Radical Landscapes at Tate Liverpool (2022); The House of Le Bas Established: 1984 at Whitechapel Gallery Archive (2023); Incipit Vita Nova at Secession Vienna (2023); and Delainia 17071965 Unfolding at Tramway for Glasgow International (2024). She was nominated for the 40th Turner Prize, presenting a new version of Incipit Vita Nova at Tate Britain (September 2024–February 2025).
In 2025, Le Bas undertook a residency at The White House, Dagenham with Create London, producing A Stranger In Silver, Walking On Air. She also presented +Fabricating My Own Myth Red Threads & Silver Needles at Newcastle Contemporary Art, a solo booth installation at Frieze London, and is currently an artist in residence in Celle Ligure, Genoa.
Her work is held in public collections including the British Council, MUCEM (Musée des civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée), and Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. The scenography, sculptural furniture, figures and performative elements within her installations are supported by furniture designer and maker Lincoln Cato.
Delaine Le Bas is represented by Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix.
Header image: Delaine Le Bas at Glastonbuy in 2024. (Bela Varadi)
