Artist Statement
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Leila Houston, The Grey Area 

Over the last 18 months Leila Houston has been researching the music box and automata and looking at how the ‘chimes’ can be related back to a time when people would call out the time of day to farmers far and wide in a field, dictated by a sundial or water timer. She has incorporated influences from both newer technologies and the older technologies they descend from. Leila uses analogue, digital, traditional art forms and participation to create the work.

In the installation The Grey Area will ask the audience to select options relating to one or more of their concerns about the current political system and their own well being. Data will be collected from their selections through touch.  Following the election on the 12th the data will be translated into a sound piece and a further artwork shown in the final week of the Interact 19 exhibition.

The project aims to be a socially engaged platform for many voices, a re-establishment of compassion. Having been brought up in a community centre in the 80s and learning the importance of centres and the need to build solidarity within them, Leila regularly invites the public to feed in to the development of the work and possibly find a way to break down today’s dehumanized experiences.

"The music box and the sound of the music box is something that takes people into a trance-like state - lost in a forgotten memory perhaps, maybe reverting to a child in an area of their mind and yet I also wonder about that place we go to when we create, somewhere between play and uncertainty, excitement, dissolution and enhancement."

Leila regularly collaborates with other artists and musicians to help form her ideas, The Grey Area has had recordings made by Leila and audio samples provided by musician Daniel Proud (Dee.P) who will also be creating the music score using the data collected showing in the final week of the show. James Chantry regularly collaborates with Leila and they run workshops for all ages in digital technologies mixed with traditional techniques. James has helped support this project through tech support.

Get in touch for sales, commissions and workshops accessible to all  leilahouston392@gmail.com

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Butterfly exoskeleton
Prices range from £40 (x9) – £390 for signed prints . Various sizes, montage or single - visit leilahouston.gallery for more prints and information 

Leila Houston (London, 1977) is a multidisciplinary  artist whose work investigates the social, political and historical aspects of a place and the impact we have on our environments. Houston explores connections between the external atmosphere and the internal sensation within places and objects, providing reflections on the language of architecture and the associations we draw through memory and the senses.

Work will be available for purchase from 26th October 2019 .....find details here on 26th. Also follow Leila Houston for regular updates on Instagram 

Please support by liking and sharing this link. 10% of all sales (from this site only) goes to HELP THE HOMELESS LEICESTER & U.K. ​

Bio
Recently work was exhibited at 2019’s Venice Biennale responding to the theme May You Live in Interesting Times.As part of the show her work was nominated for an award by Artlyst, Forbes, Venice Art Factory, Venice Art Projects, Academy Of FA, Venice.

2019 Art Council funded to produce solo show and collaborate with artists such as with Noel G Macken and S Clark. Taking the form of a music box, the work reflected feelings of the collapse of the political system which was shown at Newarke Houses Museum and LCB. Recent Exhibitions Miniscule, 58th Venice Biennale MINISCULE 2, Cross Lane Projects, Kendal Straightening out the petals (solo show), Newarke House, Leicester Walker & Bromwich: An act of Participation, Leicester Crash, London, EMPIRE II. 57th Venice Biennale, Brussels, Cumbria, London, Berlin Fit the Slit II, Venice Awards Arts Council National Lottery Project Grant Artist of the Year Award, AA2A 4-year Individual Artist Fellowship, Digswell Arts Trust
Further work
2017 Walker & Bromwich: An act of Participation, Leicester The Crash, Q Park, London Fit the Slit, Venice Lido, Venice EMPIRE II, Venice/ Berlin/ Brussels/ Cumbria/ London 2014 From the 12th Floor, LCB Depot, Leicester The Fine Art Society, Curve Theatre, Leicester OPEN 26, New Walk Museum & Art Gallery, Leicester The Image is the Servant II, Hansom Hall, Leicester In Celebration of Chinese New Year, Q Park, London 2013 The Salon, The Salon (EC Arts), Leicester Beauville Arts, Lot et Garonne, France 2012 Dual, The Cutting Room, Nottingham Playhouse, Nottingham MA & Other Postgraduates, Atkinson Gallery, Somerset

Commissions
Arts Council National Lottery Project Grant (2018) Arts Council England Research & Development Grant (2017) Arts Council England Microworld (2016) Interact Digital Labs and Genetic Moo Research & Development Grant (2015) Arts Council England Artist’s Access to Art Colleges (2013) AA2A Individual Artist Fellowship (2000-03) Digswell Arts Trust Individual Artist Grant (1999) Milton Keynes Arts Association
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"Kate" Figurine, 2019, found ceramic and paint. Photo by Leila Houston ​

MINISCULE Curated by Vanya Balogh in association with Crosslane Projects
This visit to Venice was the best work trip I've had to Venice! In terms of meeting other artists and curators and showing next to so many amazing art works!  
The standard of the work was so high, it was clear that there was a lot of thought gone into the curation of the show and how each artist approached their minuscule art works.   Many artists visiting, I have met before in other groups shows Vanya has invited us to be involved in. So lovely to meet again and discuss what we have been up to and plans for future projects. During my 6 day stay I met people from the collective to visit other openings with and exclusive evenings of the Biennale, whilst also getting to know other artists/ curators I haven't met before, at one point lording it up in a Palace with chandeliers, sweeping marble staircases, food and drink offered along a very long table,  huge old paintings and old mirrors the size of one of my living room walls at home.

Vanya in my mind is an amazing curator bringing a group of serious artists together from a wide spectrum of the globe, a creative community who are continually building and enforcing projects and future collaborations, offering an exhibit to the wide number of vistors. This show was thought to hold 1000 visitors on the opening and in the first 5 days a further 800 visitors !  

I was really proud to have my work next to other highly respected artists Ai Wei Wei, Gavin Turk, Eva Raboso, Ann Grim, Mark Woods, Rebecca Scott and the late Nancy Fout.

The space was perfect with one wall decayed brick in keeping with Venice throughout and two white walls and a full window facing the water. The space felt right for the work, the inconstant walls worked with a variety of forms, personally speaking a curators dream and you could tell Vanya must of loved finally getting these work in their suited positions!

I couldn't of chosen a better space for my sculpted/ carved coal like swan, Vesta: made with love and hate stood proud at the end of a shelf facing the room from the back , the fire like swan wings outstretched, dominating its little corner. The work was made to work with this year Biennale theme, May you live in interesting times, an imagined idea from Vesta matches, I wanted to create a timeless object, with swans being prehistoric and fire being mans important first discoveries i thought of an ancient time when someone created a swan from coal or burnt stone thinking about how the advertised image on swan matches later once appeared. Inventing an imagined history. The swan is in keeping with recent works looking at common home ornaments in Britain and social political considerations .  
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Memorable artworks this year at the Biannalle 

Christian Marclay 48 war movies. 

Travels so far in Venice.....

''Bumper Balletis a new installation of media art collective DROPSTUFF.nl and the latest addition to the ongoing artistic project The Fair Grounds, where an amusement ride doubles as an ‘art installation’ and a vendor doubles as a ‘performer’.'' click here for more info

Saw this amazing, well thought out performance at the Opening of The Parents Bedroom by Elisabeth von Samsonow @ Spazio Ridotto . It delivered the magic and wonder i recognised in my self as a child, picking up the possessions and ornaments as in wonder and studying them and the feeling and sensation of doing this as if it were a gift wrapped for a birthday.  I found she was exploring something from an angle id forgotten about when looking at objects as a child and looking at my own approch to ornaments and child hood and play in my own work.  

For more information about the exhibition visit here defiantly worth a visit with with art work, assemblage that appears like it an opening to a theatre with a curtain rolled p and a photograph (of a belonging/ object)  below. Also there is video which is also worth a watch of a performance realised in Munich in a public space and documented by Juergen Teller. ​

To end the evening we attended ​L`Ombra del Leone Cafe San Marco and enjoyed the offering of food and wine and conversations with other artists and curators. 

 dreamland memento, lost objects, timeless creation, worked on objects, sculpted and carved, crude,  raw,  coal, flame, forever stone,  Goddess of hearth , to break, to split, divide, give away, isolate....  ​

​''May You Live In Interesting Times''

Showing at Miniscule, Venice Fondamenta Sant'Anna
11th May - 21st July 2019 58th Venice Biennale

​studio developments Dec 2018- march 2019 (click images to enlarge)