Peer is excited to present Apophenia, a new co-commission and the first major solo exhibtion in the UK by London-based artist Leah Clements, produced in collaboration with Art Catalyst, Sheffield.
Clements works primarily in moving image, photography and sculpture, to explore moments of transcendence. Often giving a language to personal accounts of hard-to-articulate experiences - such as trauma, memory loss, sleep deprivation and grief - Clements' work considers how these realms, real or imaginary, can operate as radical spaces to address collective experiences of illness or disability.
Building on Clements' previous work, this co-commission explores the complex physical and psychological responses she and other crips have to finding meaning and healing in the experience of illness. Working with sculpture and video, the project takes apophenia - a psychological state that is characterised by seeing patterns in unrelated subjects and objects - as a starting point to unpack the experiences of life from the perspective of the sick bed.
Apophenia is co-commissioned and produced by Peer and Art Catalyst, Sheffield, where an iteration of the work will be shown in 2026. Clements' show is part of Peer's forthcoming 2026-27 programme, which also includes new commissions by Okiki Akinfe, Dala Nasser and Ceidre Moon Murphy. Working across painting, sculpture, sound and film these artists examine the construction of place, sovereignty and community - often producing self-contained systems and complete worlds.
Biography:
Leah Clements (b. 1989 in London, UK). Recent solo exhibitions and performances include INSOMNIA, South Kiosk, London (2022-23); The Siren of the Deep, Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2021); Hyperbaric, Artists' Association Gallery, Vilnius (2020); and Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary Group Show, Baltic 39, Newcastle (2019). Clements is the first prize recipient of the 2023 Mosaic Art Award, Hauser & Wirth London, and was the first artist-in-residence at Serpentine Galleries (2020-21).
