Joshua Leon
Grapewatching
11 October—15 November 2025
South Parade is pleased to present Grapewatching, a solo exhibition by London born, Vienna based artist Joshua Leon.
Grapewatching is the colloquial term for people obsessed by the colour purple, a colour Leon repeatedly perceives during the migraine auras he suffers chronically. It is also a colour his mother, a garment maker, has a deep and long-standing passion for.
The light bulbs have been removed from the gallery as a preventive measure, as they are migraine triggers.
All the works in the show are installed at 1 m 20 cm, the height Leon sat at while looking at his mother’s kitchen.
Joshua Leon lives and works in Vienna. His work explores the production of subjectivity. Through archival research, personal histories and theoretical concepts, his practice registers latency, itinerancy and transience as conditions of making.
Selected solo exhibitions include The Missing O and E, Chisenhale Gallery (London, 2024), Loose Routes Along the Familiar, Madonna del Pozzo (Spoleto, 2021) and Attendance(s) Close to the Close, Daily Practice (Rotterdam, 2021).
Selected group exhibitions include: Burn the Diaries, Read the Out Loud, Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz (Vienna, 2025), Tactical Spectres, La Ferme du Buisson (Paris, 2025), Air de Repos, CAPC (Bordeaux, 2024), Absence, Chisenhale Gallery (London, 2024), Itinéraire Fantôme, CAPC (Bordeaux, 2024), Presque Partout (almost everywhere), 49 Nord 6 Est, Frac Lorraine (Metz, 2024), Archive as……Slippages, Kunstverein München (Munich, 2023), Revision, PEER (London, 2022), POST, Barbican (London, 2022), Expo in a Box, 49 Nord 6 Est, Frac Lorraine (Metz, 2022), An Incomplete A–Z of Art and Poetry, Mahler + LeWitt (London, 2022), Governmental Fires, Futura (Prague, 2021).
In 2024, his first publication The Process (Chisenhale Gallery & Mousse, ed. Olivia Aherne and Amy Jones) was awarded the Emerging Art Foundation Writing Prize.