Leah Clements: Apophenia

About

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. 

For their exhibition at Peer, Clements has produced a new single-channel film, alongside a series of sculptural and audio works. Taking apophenia, a psychological state that is characterised by seeing patterns in unrelated subjects and objects as a starting point, this new body of work explores the complex physical and psychological responses she and other crips have to finding meaning in the experience of illness. 

In their single-channel film, also titled Apophenia, Clements observes a central character as she traverses different sites that have contemporary and historic relationships to water as a site for healing. Shot on location in Bath, Bristol, Wales and London, the work moves between the protagonist’s experiences of an ancient thermal Roman bath in Bath, where a temple was constructed between 70 and 60 AD, a medieval well in Wales, which has been a site of pilgrimage and healing since the 7th century, a contemporary luxury spa in London, and a domestic setting in Bristol. The film’s audio mixes a recorded conversation between Clements and writer, Jenn Ashworth, who discuss Ashworth’s 2019 memoir Notes Made While Falling and the writer's own experiences of apophenia, alongside a music score.

Set within a complete world, the exhibition is dressed with curtains, a series of new sculptures that act as portals to find hidden meaning, ‘holy’ water offerings, and seating referencing aesthetics common in wellness clinics, to spaces used for psychoanalysis and the hospital sick bed.

The materiality of disability access and the concept of interdependence informs the way that Clements produces their work, as well as how she approaches the exhibition-making process. Critically examining issues relating to the effects of chronic illness and disability within artistic and cultural production, Clements is also one of three authors of Access Docs for Artists, an online resource for disabled artists to communicate their access needs with galleries, art organisations and other employers. 

Clements’ exhibition is accompanied by a series of events as part of Peer’s Talks, Events and Workshops programme.

Apophenia is part of Peer’s 2026 Programme, which examines themes including the construction of place, sovereignty and community and includes forthcoming solo exhibitions by artists Okiki Akinfe, Dala Nasser and Ceidra Moon Murphy.

Apophenia is co-commissioned and produced by Peer and Art Catalyst, Sheffield, where an iteration of the work will be shown in summer 2026.