Delaine Le Bas
+Fabricating My Own Myth – Red Threads & Silver Needles
NCA - Gallery One & Two
31st May - 2nd August, 2025
open: Thursday - Saturday, 12 - 5pm
Late shows Performance: Speak the Truth, Saturday 17th May, 8 pm
Preview: Friday 30th May, 6 - 8pm
© ct9.studio
Step into a world where myth, memory, and material collide. Newcastle Contemporary Art proudly presents +Fabricating My Own Myth – Red Threads & Silver Needles, an exhibition by artist Delaine Le Bas, who continues her exploration of linguistics, mythology, and Gypsy Roma Traveller narratives through the tactile power of textiles, language, and storytelling.
Unfolding as a monumental installation that spills across NCA’s two vast gallery spaces and beyond, Le Bas’ work transforms the building into a living, breathing tapestry of interconnected stories. Created during her month-long residency at Newcastle Contemporary Art this spring, the exhibition culminates in an immersive environment where fabric and thread become instruments of rebellion, resistance, and revelation.
At the heart of +Fabricating My Own Myth is a provocation: what is truth, and who gets to tell it? The title itself plays on the double meaning of fabrication—both an act of making and an invention that challenges dominant narratives. For Le Bas, stitch is subversive and a medium for ‘embroidering’ truth, sewing ideas and creating physical connection.
A red thread—rich with symbolism across Roma, Japanese, and Ancient Greek mythology—runs like a pulse through the exhibition, linking both gallery spaces while serving as a metaphor for fate, connection, and defiance. Holding this thread in place are silver needles—both functional tools and potent symbols—brought to life in the form of two giant sculptural needles that will take centre stage in Le Bas’ accompanying performance work.
Public participation is key to the work, with visitors invited to sew and add their own stitches to this evolving narrative throughout the duration of the exhibition. By engaging in this act of making, which will also include working with musicians in the space, the exhibition will blur the line between artist and audience, as well as individual and collective memory.
Performance is also central to the work of Le Bas, providing a living space to express ideas with spontaneity whilst also exploring her deep interest in music and costume. A series of public performances by Le Bas with long-time collaborator Hḗrā Santos have been created to activate the gallery spaces and extend Le Bas themes of duality and stories at the heart of +Fabricating My Own Myth – Red Threads & Silver Needles.
Public Programme
Performance: Speak the Truth
Saturday 17th May, 8 pm
Speak The Truth is a new performance work with roots in Le Bas’s earlier works “Zigeuner Sauce” and “Beware Of Linguistic Engineering,” previously performed in London and Berlin. The title draws from a saying of Le Bas’s Nan (1927–2022), whose words—much like the ancient Sybil of Delphi—echo beyond death, travelling across time, and often not always what the recipient wanted to hear.
This performance will take place as part of the Late Shows event. More information can be found here.
Performance: +Fabricating My Own Myth – Red Threads & Silver Needles
Friday 30th May, 7pm
For the opening night, Le Bas presents a live performance with long-term collaborator Hḗrā Santos, centring on two monumental silver needles that move through the space as tools of both repair and disruption. In this choreographed encounter between body, object, and environment, the artists thread their way through the installation—stitching together fragments of myth and lived experience. Part ritual, part intervention, the performance embodies the tensions and dualities that run throughout Le Bas’ practice: visibility and erasure, truth and invention, tradition and transformation.
The performance is part of the preview event (6 - 8pm). It is free to attend and open to all.
About the artist
Delaine Le Bas works with fabrics, film, performance, photography and sculpture, creating large-scale immersive installations. She was one of the sixteen artists who formed ‘Paradise Lost’ The First Roma Pavilion at Venice Biennale in 2007. She worked with her late husband, the artist Damian Le Bas (1963-2017), on the installations ‘Safe European Home?’ and ‘Frontier De Luxe’.
Since 2019 Le Bas has been working with Lincoln Cato on the scenography for her exhibitions, including ‘Beware Of Linguistic Engineering 5:Berliner Herbstsalon’ at Gorki, Berlin 2022, and ‘Incipit Vita Nova’ Secession Vienna 2023.
Le Bas was one of four nominees for the 40th Turner Prize presented at Tate Britain, London, from September 2024 to February 2025, where she showed a new version of ‘Incipit Vita Nova’. She lives in Worthing, West Sussex, UK, with her new partner, Lincoln Cato. Cato supports the scenography, sculptural furniture, figures and performative elements of the installation works. She is represented by Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix, London.
Hḗrā Santos is a trans artist and activist whose practice centers on performance, visual arts, and fashion. Their work explores themes of gender, identity, trauma, memory, and movement, employing various mediums to create an experimental biographical expression infused with abstraction. Hḗrā’s artistic journey navigates the intersections of these complex concepts, offering a profound exploration of personal and societal narratives.
This exhibition has been generously supported by
