Assembly House, 44-46 Canal Road, Armley, Leeds (2026)

22/06/2026

Install has begun for Luísa’s show En Pointe which opens this Thursday! 🧑🏽‍🩰🩰

Luisa Freitas is a visual artist working in illustration and 2D animation, using both traditional
and digital media. Her practice centres on visual storytelling, employing striking imagery to
communicate emotionally resonant and socially engaged narratives.
Alongside her studio work, Freitas is an active freelance artist who collaborates with creative
organisations to develop community-based art projects and events.
Through workshops and participatory initiatives delivered in schools, museums, and local
communities, her work seeks to broaden access to the arts and foster meaningful
engagement across diverse audiences.

About the exhibition:
“En Pointe is an exhibition by Luisa Freitas presenting a series of oil pencil drawings on A2
coloured paper, and a 2d Animation, that depict ballet dancers’ feet in classical ballet
positions. The works reveal the physical reality of ballet practice, drawing attention to what is
usually concealed beneath pointe shoes. Bruises, cuts, callouses, and wounds are rendered
with honesty, exposing the physical toll and discipline inherent in professional dance.
The exhibition explores themes of endurance, resilience, perseverance, and empowerment,
highlighting how pain and struggle are transformed into artistic expression. Ballet dancers
frequently endure injury and long-term physical strain as an intrinsic part of their practice, yet
continue to perform with strength and determination.
For this project, Freitas collaborated with ballet dancers from the Northern School of
Contemporary Dance in Leeds, interviewing each participant about how their practice has
shaped them and the physical and mental challenges they face. By centering each portrait
on the dancers’ feet, the exhibition makes visible the unseen labour and personal struggles
that underpin their artistic practice.”

Opening event:
Thursday 25th June 6pm - 11pm

Friday 26th June 6pm - 9pm
Saturday 27th June 11am - 3pm

Head to the link in our bio for more info! 🔗

17/06/2026

With more than 80 artists at Assembly House now, it can be hard to meet everyone! So we got together last weekend for a members social with one common goal… Clean 100 forks found in storage because all the old ones went missing! 🧼🍴 (oh… and for everyone to meet each other if they hadn’t already)!

Big love to all our members and their hard work x

08/06/2026

We’re back baby! Week 6 of the Assembly House new unit build series is here for your viewing pleasure! 👀

This week was all about cleaning up our mess, getting organised, and laying the foundations for what would soon be our temporary gallery for the upcoming studio group show.

We hope you’re enjoying the videos, be sure to follow along as we get closer and closer to showing you how the studios have emerged! 👷🏽

01/06/2026

Three words to describe the upcoming En Pointe by Luísa Freitas! 🩰❤️

Luisa Freitas is a visual artist working in illustration and 2D animation, using both traditional
and digital media. Her practice centres on visual storytelling, employing striking imagery to
communicate emotionally resonant and socially engaged narratives.
Alongside her studio work, Freitas is an active freelance artist who collaborates with creative
organisations to develop community-based art projects and events.
Through workshops and participatory initiatives delivered in schools, museums, and local
communities, her work seeks to broaden access to the arts and foster meaningful
engagement across diverse audiences.

About the exhibition:
“En Pointe is an exhibition by Luisa Freitas presenting a series of oil pencil drawings on A2
coloured paper, and a 2d Animation, that depict ballet dancers’ feet in classical ballet
positions. The works reveal the physical reality of ballet practice, drawing attention to what is
usually concealed beneath pointe shoes. Bruises, cuts, callouses, and wounds are rendered
with honesty, exposing the physical toll and discipline inherent in professional dance.
The exhibition explores themes of endurance, resilience, perseverance, and empowerment,
highlighting how pain and struggle are transformed into artistic expression. Ballet dancers
frequently endure injury and long-term physical strain as an intrinsic part of their practice, yet
continue to perform with strength and determination.
For this project, Freitas collaborated with ballet dancers from the Northern School of
Contemporary Dance in Leeds, interviewing each participant about how their practice has
shaped them and the physical and mental challenges they face. By centering each portrait
on the dancers’ feet, the exhibition makes visible the unseen labour and personal struggles
that underpin their artistic practice.”

Opening event:
Thursday 25th June 6pm - 11pm

Friday 26th June 6pm - 9pm
Saturday 27th June 11am - 3pm

Head to the link in our bio for more info! 🔗

18/05/2026

Install has started for The Sun and Us by Ruby Jean Waterhouse!☀️

Thursday 21st May 6pm -10pm
Opening Ceremony 7pm - 8pm

Friday 22nd May 2pm - 8pm
Saturday 23rd May 11am - 6pm

Sunday 24th May 11am - 5pm
Closing Ceremony

Expanding her exploration of drawing as a time-based act informed by her surroundings, Ruby presents a site-specific installation of suspended silk sculptures, harnessing the power of sunlight to generate patterns and forms that act as records of time, space, and our interaction with our environment.

Using a cyanotype technique to transform these sculptural forms into receptive surfaces, Waterhouse employs the sun as her collaborator as its movements and rhythms create marks and forms across them. Generating a space imbued with physical traces of the past and a sense of the mystical powers of nature, she plays with the simultaneous existence of stillness and motion—the hanging forms both stationary and gently fluttering, the sun’s drawings both chronicled and quietly ongoing.

Over the course of the show, a selection of these sculptures will undergo a process of live exposure, beginning with their submersion in cyanotype solution on the opening day, and ending with their ritualistic rinsing on the closing day, stopping the development process. As those in the space interact with the works, traces of them will become imprinted on their forms, expanding the collaboration to one of incidental participation.

Visitors to the space are invited to experience and consider the often unnoticed presence of the sun in our everyday lives, its power, and our relationship with this celestial body.

Get the date in your diary and we’ll see you there!

Poster by Martha Burgin
Description by Liliana Muñoz Flannery .lianaaaa_____

for more info head to our website through the link in our bio or www.assemblyhouse.art in your browser 🔗

12/05/2026

Human Furniture with Kylie Darling

We are excited to announce we will be closing Voyeurs 2026 by collabing with See you Naked Mondays at Left Bank on Monday 18th May.
It'll be a perfect way to unwind from the weekend events with an evening of life drawing.

Kylie Darling and their partner will be exploring forniphilia which is a form of 🐝DSM where a person is used as household furniture.
From foot stool to table - watch and draw Kylie and their partner as they work through different poses.

🎟️ Ticket link is in bio and is booked directly through See You Naked Mondays 🎟️

11/05/2026

Time to rip down that battered old ceiling!

It’s week 5 of the Ass Haus new studio build, and this week was all about some good ole dirty demolition! 👷🏽

Watch til the end to see Archie being a reckless wally :)

The studio build series is all about showing you the time and hard work that goes into transforming old disused spaces in our building into exciting creative opportunities for the artists of Leeds. The new unit started as a storage room for old shop stock from before the 2000’s and we made it our mission to turn it into fresh new studios that would take our residents numbers from 65 artists up to 79! We hope you enjoy the journey - share with your friends and follow along for more 🧡

29/04/2026

We’re building a community garden! 🌱

That’s right - it’s not just been the new studio build over the last year… we’ve been tackling the pit for even longer! As some of you might have seen before, or even come down to help volunteer, the pit is our outdoor space that you can see from the windows in the exhibition space.

With funding from Kew Gardens, and plenty of effort from our staff and volunteers, we’ve been working hard to create a community garden that will provide green space, gardening workshops and a welcoming community for the people of Armley and artists alike.

In this video we take care of an old roof structure that needed removing, along with another skip worth of rubbish and dirt.

Huge thank you to everyone who has given their time and efforts to make projects like these possible - we love you all and can’t wait to share the fruits of our labour with you soon ❤️

See you next week!

28/04/2026

THIS SATURDAY! Open at 10am on the 2nd of May, we invite you to bring your pre-loved treasures to trade for tickets which can be exchanged for other donated items inside.
And don’t worry if you’ve got nothing to bring, you can still come down and buy some tickets on the door!

we hope to see all of you leaving Ass Haus with some new threads and smile on your face 🧦🧡

Assembly House
44-46 Canal Road, Armley
Leeds

Things we’ll accept:
Clothes, plants, shoes, trinkets, small furniture items (e.g. lamp, side tables)

Things we won’t accept:
Large items of furniture, beds, mattresses, broken items, dirty clothes, underwear, faulty electronics

27/04/2026

Announcing the second show in our 2026 programme…
sun & us (Invisible Performance) by Ruby Jean Waterhouse ☀️

Thursday 21st May 6pm -10pm
Opening Ceremony 7pm - 8pm

Friday 22nd May 2pm - 8pm
Saturday 23rd May 11am - 6pm

Sunday 24th May 11am - 5pm
Closing Ceremony

-

Expanding her exploration of drawing as a time-based act informed by her surroundings, Ruby Jean Waterhouse presents a site-specific installation of suspended silk sculptures, harnessing the power of sunlight to generate patterns and forms that act as records of time, space, and our interaction with our environment.

Using a cyanotype technique to transform these sculptural forms into receptive surfaces, Waterhouse employs the sun as her collaborator as its movements and rhythms create marks and forms across them. Generating a space imbued with physical traces of the past and a sense of the mystical powers of nature, she plays with the simultaneous existence of stillness and motion—the hanging forms both stationary and gently fluttering, the sun’s drawings both chronicled and quietly ongoing.

Over the course of the show, a selection of these sculptures will undergo a process of live exposure, beginning with their submersion in cyanotype solution on the opening day, and ending with their ritualistic rinsing on the closing day, stopping the development process. As those in the space interact with the works, traces of them will become imprinted on their forms, expanding the collaboration to one of incidental participation.

Visitors to the space are invited to experience and consider the often unnoticed presence of the sun in our everyday lives, its power, and our relationship with this celestial body.

Get the date in your diary and we’ll see you there!

for more info head to our website through the link in our bio or www.assemblyhouse.art in your browser 🔗

Assembly House

22/06/2026

17/06/2026

08/06/2026

01/06/2026

18/05/2026

12/05/2026

11/05/2026

29/04/2026

28/04/2026

27/04/2026

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