Leeds Arts University Exhibition Spaces

Leeds Arts University has a large and exciting exhibitions programme held at both our Blenheim Walk and Vernon Street galleries.

Our curatorial programme is an educational, cultural, and research component of Leeds Arts University. As University Galleries, the Blenheim Walk and Vernon Street spaces contribute significantly to the institution’s research and educational curriculum, with a dynamic public programme of exhibitions, publications, talks, commissions, performances, symposia, across our two campuses and satellite display spaces.

In response to a global moment of environmental and sociopolitical crisis, our curatorial programme invites local and international artists, curators, researchers, and academics to present their research-practice on the most pressing challenges of contemporaneity. Our programme provides opportunities for cultural engagement with practices examining the past, shaping the present and imagining the future of the relationship between human societies and the natural environment.

Our galleries endeavour to engage a diverse audience from the university community to local and international visitors through its curatorial programmes, collections, research and educational projects, prioritising community engagement, practice-based research excellence, aesthetic and knowledge production.

Previous exhibitions include solo presentations by artists Marwa Arsanios, Kyriaki Goni, Ilana Halperin, Yoko Ono and Mieke Bal as well as research projects on creature design by Rosemary Chalmers, consumer culture research by Dawn Woolley, and an experimental graduate project by performance artist and writer Samra Mayanja.

Exhibition Archive

Leeds Arts University Art Collection

Since the institution obtained university status in 2017, a concerted effort has been made to consolidate and re-curate the University Art Collection. This forms part of a wider array of historical special collections within the area of Curation and Library Services. An internal Acquisitions Panel was established to consider incoming opportunities, and over the last six years, the University Art Collection has become more refined in its criteria:

“The remit of Leeds Arts University collection and archive is to reflect and inform research practice, and to draw on the history and impact of the institution and its alumni. Works and archival documents within the collection reflect the work of alumni or other artists which may include direct links to the institution or its activities.”

View our collection catalogue below.