We are extremely pleased to host a brand new installation of work by Turner Prize nominee Delaine Le Bas (Worthing 1965).

Rags Of Evidence revolves around Le Bas’ concerns around identity - how we present ourselves, how we are ‘read’ by others and how these narratives resonate through our culture. Le Bas has always used her own visual identity in her work, presenting with complicity and playing with archetypes and stereotypes as a Roma woman, challenging others who see her identity as fixed, when its very fluidity is what she is calling in to this very dialogue. The artist has stated “people think they can tell me what I am because of what they think they know.” Such assumptions have tested and plagued the Roma ever since the Elizabethan age, when they were seen as Moon People - other, outside, from somewhere unknowable and alien. Obviously, such language persists into our current political debates, when malignly constructed language desensitises us to the plight of many.

For this exhibition, Le Bas focusses on the role of the body and clothing in this dialogue. Clothing is embedded in our ways of being, and has always been a signifier of how we wish to project as well as a way for others to judge us. As Le Bas states her interest in the “etiquette of how we dress. Appearance is so loaded.” The installation will feature clothing hand-made and decorated by the artist, festooned with her vocabulary of symbols - the Medusa, cartoon characters, slogans and challenges. The gallery will be reconfigured with drapery and the walls, floors and ceilings covered with calico, immersing the visitor in an immediate environment that may be claustrophobic to some, reflecting the trap of assumptions. Additionally the installation will feature photographic portraits of the artist chosen from a two decade working relationship with Tara Darby.

Delaine Le Bas is currently exhibiting her vast installation Delainia: 17071965 Unfolding at Tramway, Glasgow. She will also be exhibiting as part of the Turner Prize presentation at Tate Britain, and opens a companion show to Rags Of Evidence, The Archipelago On Fire at Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix in London in October.