Parham Ghalamdar & Dr Lone Sorensen
Faces and Threads Exhibition

Guest starring the community of Beeston & Hunslet

Opening Night
Tuesday 1st September | 5:30-6:30pm

Faces and Threads asks a simple question: who gets to shape the stories we hear about the climate crisis?

The exhibition brings together three bodies of work: portraits by Lone Sorensen, ceramics by Parham Ghalamdar, and large paintings made with residents of Beeston in Leeds and Longsight in Manchester.

Sorensen’s paintings depict politicians, broadcasters and online personalities whose faces circulate constantly through television, social media and political campaigns. Built from thick, heavy layers of oil paint, familiar faces become unstable, swollen and almost sculptural, while their eyes remain sharply observed. Beginning with images their subjects have already placed into circulation, the paintings ask how political power is performed and how confidence, repetition and visibility can begin to shape what appears truthful.

The community paintings were made during workshops responding to social-media posts and public figures connected to climate change. Participants used Tarot cards to discuss what new patterns and archetypes are being repeated and rewarded online. The works were later damaged while shown outdoors in Beeston, then repaired and added to, leaving that history visible.

Ghalamdar’s ceramics resemble vessels contaminated by petroleum. Black glaze spreads like oil or tar, while blue suggests water trapped within a polluted landscape. Objects associated with sustaining life appear poisoned by the material driving climate breakdown.

Together, the works ask who is heard, what shapes belief, and what remains when political, social and environmental systems begin to break down.