Projects
Romani History X
Installation by Damian and Delaine Le Bas
Delaine and Damian Le Bas arranged re-drawn maps, historical images and their photographs on the fences in front of the Gorki. Their photographs include some of Delaine's Romani Embassy performance series, which was revived for the opening of the 3. Berliner Herbstsalon. The topographic maps and city maps served as the starting point of Damian Le Bas's artistic overhaul and treatment of the travelling of the Roma and their demands:
“We're claiming this space for ourselves. We, the constrained, limited and defined by those who want to control, name and silence us. Here we are.”
Tito's Atomic Bunker
Damian and Delaine Le Bas
On-site installation in Tito's Atomic Bunker
The invited artists in the 3rd Project Biennial of Contemporary Art, D-0 ARK Underground bring in, site-specific or associated works into the context of reading and understanding “Tito’s nuclear shelter”. They are commenting on the formation of critical social discourses and alternative ways of life in the time of the Cold War and/or their effects on present-day contexts. The curatorial concept and the artworks of this edition engage with contemporary questions, which the industrialized capitalist society is facing today, and opens up a virtual space for rethinking the relationships between nature, humankind, culture and technology.
3rd of Project Biennial of Contemporary Art
D-0 ARK Underground
Konjic, Bosnia and Herzegovina
2015
Grace in Thy Sight
Public Residency by the Le Bas family at the Eye of York
“If you've been down to the Eye of York recently, you won't have missed the fact that a family of gypsies have pitched camp on the green opposite the crown court.”
Being a gypsy is a real art by Stephen Lewis
The York Press / 11th October 2014
As part of PH1 'Artists In Place' residency project commissioned by the New Schoolhouse Gallery and supported by the Arts Council and City of York Council, Damian and Delaine Le Bas encamped on the green outside Clifford's Tower at the Eye of York for a public residency. Living on-site in a caravan and a transit van for a month, they were joined by their son Damian James Le Bas, who also participated in the programme.
Open to the public daily for conversations, their “aim was to try to counter misunderstandings about Gypsy and Traveller people – and also to raise awareness about homelessness and insecurity”.
Damian Le Bas painted a series of huge eyes on the side of the shack that he had constructed on the Eye of York, delighting in the fact that “eye” in English Romany is “Yorkie” and that the first thing the judges would see peering from their chambers would be huge, unblinking Yorkies returning their stare.
