In the run up to her exhibition Newcastle Contemporary Art (NCA) Kate Sweeney met up with Delaine le Bas to talk about the work and ideas behind +Fabricating My Own Myth – Red Threads & Silver Needles.
Kate Sweeney: Red threads and silver needles are such strong symbols that take you straight into the work. How have you been thinking about them for this exhibition?
Delaine Le Bas: I do a lot of sewing in my work. In folklore and in costume, red is used a lot for protection. I wanted to use that as a thread, literally, running through the work and stitching it together. We’ve had these really giant silver needles made as well, so we are doing this big stitching – stitching a new narrative together. To fabricate something can be to tell a lie, but also to get something made; something false and something honest. The words have at least two different meanings and contradict each other at the same time. I’m really interested in that with language. I’m fabricating my own myth; being in charge of my own story. I think that’s important for everyone. I think that as beings, there’s all sorts of complications and nuances that never get spoken about.
KS: Do you use a method or a way of getting your words out so that you are speaking the truth, or highlighting ‘linguistic engineering’?
DLB: I try to, but coming from where I come from, am I just a silver-tongued liar? I’ve said this before when I’ve made statements: why are you listening to me? Because actually, I’m only a Gypsy. Maybe I’m just a silver-tongued liar? I have often had to deal with being told who I should be because the word that describes who I am is so loaded with imagery. When I say I’m a silver-tongued liar, am I who I say I am? There are people that know how to use language to their advantage over other people. They’ll be telling you one thing, but actually they’re saying something else to you. The phrase ‘beware of linguistic engineering’, in the exhibition text here, was something I came up with for the show I did when we were coming out of the lockdowns. Language was really weaponised during Covid.
Even though we live in ‘this’ world with mobile phones and computers and AI etc., we’re still living in centuries past because there’s an ‘elite’ that dictates our movement, where we can and can’t go. We have access to such a small amount of the land and that access has been gradually erased and erased and erased. And if they could erase the last few percent, something like 3%, they’d get rid of our access to that as well. I think that it can seem like society has progressed, but in many ways, have we?
KS: That’s really interesting. I wonder what does the land of ‘England’ mean to you?
DLB: A lot of the work that I did earlier on in my career involved finding those flowery hand embroidered napkins or tablecloths in charity shops – the ones of the countryside, or with the ladies in crinoline skirts – and I’d write something into them, or I’d draw a caravan in there. I was thinking about a representation of England’s green and pleasant lands where all the people who are actually there are missing, apart from the landed gentry. And even if you are there, you’re not recognised or recognisable. Many artists historically have painted the countryside with people in it, but no-one talks about who those other people are in those paintings, the people that are working in the land, the Gypsies that are there for example.
I did some research around Turner, and if you look at his sketchbooks, there are notations in there about all different people. I saw one with a gorgeous little drawing of the Thames and a water taxi with a Gypsy getting into it. I use the word Gypsy because I feel like I should be able to use the word I want to use to describe myself. By talking about myself that way I’m putting myself into the landscape. It’s like a reclaiming of the land and a redrawing of an England that belongs to so many people who aren’t seen in the landscape. If we only think about it through a certain lens of history, it’s like we were never there. History gets rewritten by other people and then you become something that you weren’t.
KS: Do you think about how history will preserve your work? Obviously, when you re-use things from previous shows, for example, there’s a form of erasure happening.
DLB: Some of the work will survive, some of it won’t. Textiles notoriously don’t withstand the test of time because of how they’re used, and because even if we touch them, the oils come out of our skin and degrade them. You have to watch how they’re packed; you have to take them out and unfold them because otherwise the threads weaken on those folds. Their history is within them but also their precarity.
And I like to think of an oral tradition for the work. When people experience it, they talk about it to other people and that becomes its own story. I come from a tradition of passing stories that way; a culture where places and people I’ve never met are as alive to me as if I have met them. I think that’s something very precious. Maybe the experience of art could be something that’s treasured more, not just the physicality of the object. That’s why I think it’s important for people to experience performance and be in the space with what remains afterwards. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in this show; do people just follow the footsteps around the room? What traces of themselves will they leave?
Kate Sweeney is an artist based in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Delaine Le Bas: +Fabricating My Own Myth – Red Threads & Silver Needles at NCA – Gallery One & Two, 31st May – 2nd August, 2025.
This interview was supported by Newcastle Contemporary Art.
Published 05.06.2025 by Lesley Guy in Interviews
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