The Whitworth in Manchester has announced toDelaine Le Bas: Un-Fair-Ground, the artist’s first solo museum exhibition following her Turner Prize nomination in 2024.
Delaine Le Bas will transform the Whitworth’s special exhibition galleries into an all-encompassing mixed media installation featuring paintings, sculpture, and video.
The exhibition will draw on the Whitworth’s collection, which will be reimagined and reframed by Le Bas in the expansive context of her artmaking.
Inspired by the concept of ‘the metabolic museum’ proposed by curator and thinker Clémentine Deliss in her influential book of the same name, Le Bas will present a space for a critical rethinking of museum collections and their logic.
The artist employs feminist magic and emancipatory ritual to transform the original meanings of a diverse range of artworks, from William Blake’s iconic The Ancient of Days to works from the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection. More than 20 artworks from the Whitworth’s collection, spanning 200 years and many media, have been selected by the artist to be displayed in an improvisational and energetic scenography.
The exhibition will unfold in four parts, incorporating new and existing works by Le Bas across the installation. It will include a large-scale witch house installation, featuring a wallpaper design created by Le Bas in recognition of the Whitworth’s extensive collection of this medium.
At the heart of the exhibition, a stage set will frame a dynamic, double-sided performance space. The exhibition will also host new works by Le Bas in dialogue with key collection pieces by artist precursors and peers, including Madge Gill and Ana Maria Pacheco, exploring the artist’s deep engagement with magic, folklore and witchcraft. Un-Fair-Ground, a monumental mural created by Le Bas for the 2024 Glastonbury Festival, will be exhibited for the first time in a gallery context.
Le Bas has invited two artists from Venture Arts, a Manchester-based visual arts organisation working with learning disabled artists, to collaborate with her in making a part of the show. Sarah Lee and Leslie Thompson will make new work with Le Bas, to be displayed within the gallery spaces.
Delaine Le Bas, the artist, 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 see 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 the ongoing curatorial conversations and how I am able to engage with the museum and art gallery as an artist. It’s a very involved, intricate untangling of formality with the residency approach and ‘radical operation’ working with costumes, wallpaper, prints, drawing, painting and sculpture. I am excited at being able 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. The artist’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 radical rethinking and deep engagement with the Whitworth’s collection creates a space that is both critically charged and truly 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, the Whitworth, said: “We are extremely happy to follow Delaine Le Bas’ lead on reimagining the collections of the Whitworth in a way that foregrounds female artists and underrepresented communities through the transformative power of magic and non-linear thinking. Delaine Le Bas’s commitment to social and political justice is a powerful example of a practice that helps build inclusive and poetic narratives for the future.”
Delaine Le Bas: Un-Fair-Ground
13 February – 31 May 2026
The Whitworth, Oxford Road, Manchester, M15 6ER
Open Tue-Sun 10-5pm (till 9pm on Thursday)
Free entry
