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Delaine Le Bas (born 1965) is a British Artist from a Romany background. Delaine Le Bas has shown her art extensively both in the UK and internationally, including at the International Festival of Singular Art, Roquevaire, France; the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, U.S., Transition Gallery and the 2005 and 2007 Prague Biennales. In June 2007 her work was included in the first Roma pavilion of the 2007 Venice Biennale. Le Bas will participate in ROUNDTABLE: The 9th Gwangju Biennale, which takes place September 7 – November 11, 2012 in Gwangju, Korea.
Le Bas has had several solo exhibitions, including “Room” at Transition Gallery in London; “The House of the JuJu Queen” at Galerie Giti Nourbaksch, Berlin, and at Galleria Sonia Rosso, Turin.
Her work moves expansively from a unique series of thematic departures including nationhood, race, gender and relationships. These issues are explored through freely combined media. Embroidery, painting and decoupage/”femmage” interact with sculpture and installations that reflect domestic claustrophobia, the transient nature of modern materiality and the tensions that characterise Le Bas’ own experience as a Gypsy. The boundary between embellished objects and recovered items re-deposited within the installation is deliberately tested and blurred. Tapestries adorned with the Artist’s own stitching and brushmarks arte confronted by items with a less unequivocal history.
About her own work, Le Bas comments: “As a Romany, my viewpoint has always been that of the outsider and this position of the ‘other’ is reflected in the materials and messages within my work. We live in a culture of mixed values and garbled messages. My works are crafted from the disregarded and disparate objects of the car boot sale and the charity shop. A bricollage of materials. Employing the materials of everyday, all formed together in a manner that allows them to be precious yet reclaimed.”
Le Bas has previously been associated with Outsider Art, a term used to refer collectively to self-taught, mentally ill or otherwise unconventional artists working outside the confines of the art establishment..
