If you have ever felt like the rear end of a car is frowning at you, or if you have a special item of clothing that you wear for good luck, it is likely that you have experienced apophenia. This is the human tendency to perceive patterns and form conclusions based around unrelated sets of data. Leah Clements’ first major solo show, Apophenia, at Peer Gallery, co-commissioned by Arts Catalyst, Sheffield, explores how it feels when this normal cognitive function turns disruptive.
Drawing on their own experience of being diagnosed with a chronic illness, Clements seeks to articulate the complex and elusive psychological effects of living with a long-term illness or disability, through a mixture of film, sculpture, and audio works. Whilst peering through the large window that reveals the main part of the exhibition, as the gallery’s name insists, visitors may initially suspect that they have arrived at the wrong venue. Two large treatment chairs inhabit the room, the type that you would typically find at some kind of primary care practice, inspiring instant anxiety from behind the glass. Upon further inspection, it becomes clear that the chairs are for visitors to recline on whilst listening to an audio description of the exhibition, voiced by Clements, through a pair of headphones.
Sitting in this clinical space, being stared at by unsuspecting passersby, and exchanging awkward glances with the smiley invigilator who sits at a small desk in the corner of the room, certainly elicits an uncomfortable, yet familiar, feeling. During my visit, it became obvious that many of the other visitors had already pre-empted this feeling, and therefore, avoided this part of the experience altogether. Immediately, Apophenia invites viewers to detach from the comfort of passive spectatorship through participation, resulting in a recreation of the state of heightened awareness that Clements intends to capture.
A series of small sculptures fill the corners of the room and line a waist-level shelf beside the treatment chairs. These sculptures feature analogue photographs of pilgrimage sites, including the Temple of Sulis Minerva, and St Winefride’s Well, acting as ‘portals’ to other worlds. Although this exhibition is primarily concerned with the consequences of warped pattern recognition, the symbolism behind these sculptures is purposefully easy to decode.
Many viewers will instinctively view their triangular shape as a reference to Christian iconography, revealing the shared logic between apophenia and religion, in how they both fundamentally serve the human desire to create coherence. The triangular shape also distorts the viewer’s perception of depth, reflecting how certain illnesses and disabilities can drastically alter an individual’s concept of time and space, blurring the boundary between what is real and what is imaginary, and consequently fragmenting the path towards coherence. Clements’ sculptures act as tools for interpreting cognitive mapping in trauma-impacted minds, how they search for meaning, and how they seek to fill conceptual gaps.
In a conversation with the curator Iarliath Ní Fheorais, Clements emphasised that this exhibition takes a great deal of inspiration from Jenn Ashworth’s memoir Notes Made While Falling (2019). In this book, Ashworth detailed her personal battle with illness following a traumatic birth experience and her subsequent withdrawal from the church. Ashworth coined the term ‘apopheny’ as a sort of antonym for epiphany, which Clements further described as “trying to find meaning and not knowing where to look for it, and not knowing whether you’re looking in the right places.”
Although it is not explicitly mentioned, the themes of this exhibition echo Virginia Woolf’s On Being Ill (1926), particularly in relation to her discussion of moments of ‘non-being’. This refers to how withdrawal from a busy social life, due to illness, allowed Woolf to focus on the smaller details in her everyday life that would otherwise go unnoticed, providing an alternative understanding of the world. Woolf’s writing illuminates how illness invokes an impulse to magnify the mundane, an idea that is shared quite literally in Clements’ work.
In an adjoining room, screenings of Clements’ film, Apophenia (2026), begin every half an hour. This single-channel film follows a cloaked character travelling between distinct locations where water is a defining feature, including a Roman bath, a medieval well, and a luxury wellness spa, locations that viewers will recognise from the sculptures in the previous room. The film’s signalling towards the restorative and healing properties of water is further emphasised by the ‘holy water offerings’ lined above the doorway to the screening room. The water’s reflective surface mirrors the protagonist’s composed facade, masking the murky depths of the subconscious mind. The main character’s endless search for answers seems to allude to the enduring myth that disabled individuals can be cured through intense medical or spiritual intervention, and the film acknowledges this in the opening line, declaring that “Not everybody can be admitted to the temple.”
Clements’ first major solo show brings a novel perspective to the topic of chronic conditions that resists common narratives by spatialising lived experiences. Apophenia attempts to dissect how meaning is constructed by situating viewers inside the mind of an individual living with an illness or disability, resulting in an embodied level of awareness and a lingering feeling of disorientation.
Apophenia is on view at Peer Gallery until 2 May, 2026. For more info, visit their website.
Image: Leah Clements, Apophenia production still (2025). Commissioned and produced by Peer, London and Arts Catalyst, Sheffield. Courtesy of the artist.
