Assembly House

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Assembly House

An artist-run studio space situated in a Victorian textile mill by the Leeds-Liverpool canal

31/08/2026

Double trouble!! As the day draws nearer, we’re excited to share the second show opening at Assembly House on the 10th of September at 6pm.

A Place at the Table - Joel Clements & Freya Stockford

10th - 6 til 11pm
11th - 12am til 8pm
12th - 11am til 4pm

There’s something special about the objects we live with every day. A fruit bowl on the counter, a half-eaten meal, a jar left on the windowsill. Place at the Table is an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Freya Stockford and Joel Clements, two artists who have both found their place at the table.

Freya paints in structured, chalky layers of acrylic, using colour and mood to turn ordinary scenes into something that feels almost like a memory, hinting at a story that came before and one that will follow. For this exhibition, she has also immortalised her 3-year-old son’s unfinished dinners as large-format drawings.
Joel, working in oil paint, takes a different approach, slowing right down to focus on one object or a small still life grouping - a spilled fruit bowl, a jug, painting with textures and tone to envoke a familial feeling.

Side by side, their work shows just how differently two artists can look at the same kind of subject, and how much warmth, humour and feeling can be found in the things we usually walk straight past.

you’ll also be able to catch both shows on the 12th September during Leeds Open Studios, where Joel and Freya will be running a screen printing workshop 🤩

More info on our website, or head to the link in our bio 🔗

27/08/2026

Join Alice Boulton-Breeze for a creative workshop, set in Assembly House’s new community garden space to explore the folklore, myth and fable of our beloved home in Armley.  You’ll be provided with all materials and create your own artwork to transform our community garden into a new exhibition that brings these often overlooked stories to life. Think Holy Wells, Giants, Ghosts and more. 👻  You can then take your artwork home or find it a permanent resting place within the plants and industrial architecture.  No artistic experience required! Just bring a curious and open mind.  Refreshments will be available as well as tours of our studio space.

Sunday 13th September - 11am til 1pm

Nationwide Festival: Heritage Open Days
Funded by: Leeds Civic Trust
Workshop led by:

Head to the link in our bio to find out more and book a place 🔗

( 📸: Ian Munro )

25/08/2026

Kicking off our announcements for a huge September, we share with you - Places Pulled, the debut solo show by Zoe Maxwell ( Zoë Maxwell ) 🚏

Open times:

Opening night 10th Sept 6 - 11pm
11th Sept 12pm - 6pm
12th Sept 10:30am – 4:30pm
13th Sept 11am – 3pm

Through her painting practice, Zoe Maxwell pulls at the tether between place and memory,
exploring the space that is created away from strict truth and fixed spaces. Her paintings
depict shared public and domestic spaces, commonplaces that are often left out of the
sequence of recollection.
Transitional spaces and passing places both found in an urban setting and within a home
are held and presented to the audience as she invites us to dwell as if on a streetcorner,
leaning within a doorway or waiting in line. Through an approach informed by memory
processes of encoding and retrieval, Maxwell combines past, present and hypothetical
futures within her paintings. The compositions are taken from a variety of structures we use
and inhabit, however through the process of making, traces from elsewhere are introduced
and the scenes becomes decontextualised bringing a broader sense of familiarity.
Maxwell’s work centres around the sequence of memory and how we recall place. She
presents commonplaces as settings for confabulations that sit between the possibilities of
what was, what could have been and potentially what could be.
Places Pulled is Zoe Maxwell’s debut solo show. This collection of paintings continues the
themes within Maxwell’s practice, with a focus on the transactional and transitional public
spaces which become the overlooked backdrops of our repeated routines and journeys.

We can’t wait to see you there!
More info and details on how to get to Assembly House can be found through the link in our bio or at AssemblyHouse.Art 🔗

21/08/2026

Woah! So many new exciting things to show you!

We’re chuffed to be taking part in Leeds Open Studios again this year and have lots to share.

Firstly, you’ll be able to see our brand new studios that opened back in April! They’ve been filled with amazing artists who will be around to chat with you and show off their work.

We’ll also have TWO exhibitions on! The next show in our programme ‘Places Pulled’ by Zoë Maxwell ( Zoë Maxwell ) will be showing in our main gallery, the project space. 🚏

Making use of the new Silk Screen Printing workshop - Joel Clements ( Joel Clements - Tattoo Artist - Leeds ) and Freya Stockford ( Freya Stockford ) present ‘A Place at the Table’, alongside a chance for you guys to try screen printing yourself! 🍊

You might remember the bar area got a fresh look last year… well we’re doing it again! There will be a bunch of new artwork on the walls to show off our fab studio holders. 🖼️

Finally you’ll be able to grab some refreshments and check out the new garden we’ve been showing off. 🌱

it’s gonna be an amazing day and we can’t wait to see you all! More information on the exhibitions to come.

Leeds Open Studios at Assembly House:
10:30am - 4:30pm
Saturday 12th September

44-46 Canal Road, Armley, Leeds, LS12 2PL

20/08/2026

There’s just over a week left on the fundraiser for Pyramid!

Pyramid are raising £20,000 to help protect their weekly creative groups, one-to-one artist support and open studio.

We worked with Pyramid for Irregular Art School in 2022 (A research project led by Jade French at University of Leeds). Since then we’ve loved supporting them as a fellow Leeds arts space.

If you believe everyone deserves the opportunity to explore the arts and become artists, please donate if you can and share their campaign 🧡

Your donation, regardless of size, makes a difference. Every share helps them reach more people 🙌

🔗 Donate via the link in their bio Pyramid Of Arts

[pictured above is Assembly House members meeting with Pyramid for the Irregular Art School project in 2022]

17/08/2026

Go go s**t shovelers! Here’s the mighty morphin’ mega dweebs suiting up to scrape down one of the rooms in the pit so you can all enjoy the community garden pigeon p**p free 🙌⚡️

10/08/2026

We did it! Last skip day working on the pit!

The final space in the pit that needed sorting was fully cleared out yesterday thanks to our lovely team of volunteers 🧡

What a colossal effort it’s been, 9 skips over 3 years - we can’t believe we’ve gotten to this point whoop whoop

Just some polishing up to do now! and many future plans :)

06/08/2026

We had the pleasure of a visit from Kew Gardens this Tuesday! 🌱

The wonderful Gaia came to check out the progress we’ve made on our community garden project, colloquially named The Pit here at Assembly House!

Kew Gardens are one of our key funders on this project and have enabled us the bring some green into our transformed outdoor space right here in Armley. We even spotted a Bee that morning! 🐝

We were also able to rescue the old Armley Canal Road sign when they were doing refurbishments to the old station across the road, and so now it stands proudly over the climbing plants, a little bit of local heritage preserved 💚

Lots more to come as we share all the documented progress with you, and before long we’ll be able to open the garden up to you lot and offer some community workshops and a peaceful retreat from busy city life.

Thanks to both Kew Gardens and Climate Action Leeds for providing the funding that has helped make this project a reality.

05/08/2026

Announcing the next show in our programme, The Stars are all Dirt by Isaac Whitney ! ✨

THE STARS ARE ALL DIRT

The debut solo exhibition by Isaac Whitney, and an expansion of his figurative ink painting practice, from the page to large scale installation.
After an extensive period of experimentation, Isaac has developed a precise technique of painting with ink on rolls of fine silk; a technique that manipulates the surface of the silk in order to achieve the same flowing effect as ink on paper.
Inspired by the human form and its abstractions, Isaac’s fluid ink painting style was refined attending weekly life drawing classes at See You Naked, a process which he now feels is ready for its natural evolution.
Presented as a hung installation, the exhibition highlights the silks natural properties of transparency and sheen, using light as an added collaborator in creating an immersive experience for the audience.
Isaac’s practice is heavily process led, blending art and science, with a focus on a materials inherent context when creating an artwork with it. He has long had a fascination with black ink, derived from soot, a by-product of a burning flame resulting in pure carbon.
As his chosen medium, Isaac examines the parallels between that process and his history of mental illness, shaped through fire, creating from the ashes.

Due to some unforeseen circumstances, the dates for this show have been pushed back to the 27th of August (Opening) until the 29th of August, so please go by these dates and not the ones on our programme flyer.

August 27th 6 - 11pm (Opening Night)
28th 6 - 9pm
29th 11am - 3pm

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

27/07/2026

Photo’s from Lucif Neave’s PEST, performed by Milly Connor last Thursday

Thanks to everyone who came down for what was a fun and busy evening, and huge congratulations to everyone involved in creating a really high quality performance! ⭐️

Choreography and set: ˚ʚ Lucif Neave ɞ˚
Live performance: m i l l y
Sound: Tobias Poffley
Pianist: Jacob Clark

📸: Kai Brooks

Address

44-46 Canal Road, Armley
Leeds
LS122PL

Telephone

+447581629080

Website

https://www.assemblyhouse.art/

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