Meet Delaine Le Bas, the former Turner Prize nominee with a major retrospective in Manchester
The artist has imbued Manchester's Whitworth gallery with a feminist and spiritual magic. Discover more about her here
‘Coming from where I come from, I was always on the outside of things,’ says Delaine Le Bas, when we speak over Zoom to mark the opening of her major exhibition at the Whitworth, Manchester, her first solo show since her 2024 Turner Prize nomination. ‘I think I was in this position where I was on the fringes of things, in many ways, because of what I was dressed like from a very early age.’
Through her work, Le Bas considers notions of belonging and nationhood through the lens of her own British Gypsy, Romani, Roma and Traveller People heritage. Her mixed-media works – Le Bas delights in working across mediums, from fabric, film and sculpture to photography, painting and performance – bring immersive otherworlds to life, and they are ones where female artists and underrepresented communities take centre stage.
Delaine Le Bas at her ‘Un-Fair-Ground’ exhibition at the Whitworth, Manchester, 2026
Growing up, Le Bas was inspired by an eclectic prism of cultural references. Despite being ‘too young for punk’, she says, she cites English punk rock band X-Ray Spex as a formative influence. ‘When I heard [1978 song] ‘Identity’, it was the first time I’d heard anything that really related to me – I identified with the lyrics in the song, and seeing how [frontwoman] Poly Styrene was dressed.’
This interest in fashion and music culminated in a desire to go to art school. She studied at London’s Saint Martin's School of Art (now Central Saint Martins) and has been a practising artist ever since, with a productive career punctuated with high-profile highlights. In 2007, she was one of 16 artists who created ‘Paradise Lost’ at the first Roma Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, working alongside late husband Damian Le Bas (1963-2017); they collaborated again in 2017 on the stage designs, costumes and texts for ‘Roma Armee’ at Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theatre. Exhibitions – including 2022’s Tate Liverpool commission ‘Radical Landscapes’ and ‘The House of Le Bas Established: 1984’ at the Whitechapel Gallery Archive in 2023 – shaped her own distinctive artistic identity.
Delaine Le Bas, ‘Un-Fair-Ground’, at the Whitworth
Delaine Le Bas, ‘Un-Fair-Ground’, at the Whitworth
The culmination of her work is gloriously immersive, something evident in the current exhibition, ‘Un-Fair-Ground’. Here, Le Bas doesn’t take her space in the gallery for granted, questioning the meaning of the space itself before it becomes a museum showcase for her works. A spirit of collaboration reconsiders the idea of the solo artist working in isolation, from a wallpaper design inspired by the Whitworth’s extensive collection to new works created with artists including Madge Gill and Ana Maria Pacheco.
Delaine Le Bas, ‘Un-Fair-Ground’, at the Whitworth
Interwoven throughout are references to magic, folklore and witchcraft, appearing in every work from a double-sided performance space to epic mural Un-Fair-Ground, Le Bas’ work for the 2024 Glastonbury Festival that is seen here for the first time in a gallery context.
‘It is important to me to create a different space, even though it's within this space,’ Le Bas adds. ‘So often when I'm in spaces, I'm thinking about how that space came about, what its history is, and how does it change how people feel when they come into it?’
Delaine Le Bas, ‘Un-Fair Ground’ at the Whitworth, Manchester, until 31 May 2026
