THE Black Butterflies exhibition at the New School House Gallery, York, brings together work by four of Britain’s most significant artists from gypsy/traveller heritage.

Between them, Delaine Le Bas, Damian Le Bas, Daniel Baker and Travellers’ Times editor, dramatist, poet and film-maker Damian James Le Bas challenge the viewer to rethink their preconceptions of gypsy identity.

Although they have exhibited widely across Europe, including at the Venice and Prague Biennales, their work is rarely seen in the UK.

“Margot Brown, from the Centre for Global Education at York St John University, approached me about showing their work. They had first wanted to bring these artists to York three or four years ago, after they were in the first Roma Pavilion at the Venice Biennale,” says New School House co-director Robert Teed.

“The result is an exhibition unlike anything we’ve had here before. It’s good to shake things up and the social value in it is fantastic too.”

This rare opportunity to exhibit in Britain is intended as a catalyst for a new conversation about Roma Gypsy identity, says Robert.

“The art challenges its audience to reconsider prevailing attitudes towards the Roma community, as well as placing a mirror up to how the community perceives itself. Through a combination of works on textiles, maps, glass and paper – not to mention a harrowing installation that references the drowning of two young Roma Gypsy girls near Naples in 2008 – the exhibition manages to offer both a highly contemporary and broad historical sweep.”

Damian Le Bas, born in Sheffield in 1963, uses gypsy cartographies to represent the gypsy cultures and its relationship to the non-Romani, Gadjo majority. “In a subversive manner he reinterprets borders to represent the borders of gypsy worlds,” says Robert.

Le Bas describes himself as a “gypsy activist”, descended from Manouche, Huguenots, Irish travellers, pirates and English Romanies who lived in the grounds of Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. He graduated from the Royal College Of Art in 1987 and was mentored by George Melly, showing in many Outsider art exhibitions in the 1980s and 1990s.

“The word ‘gypsy’ can be controversial but I see it as the only word that can unite all the nomadic clans so there can be a voice for lobby,” he says.

Untold histories, exclusion based on difference and misrepresentation loom large in the works of Delaine Le Bas, who is part of large family of English Romani gypsies. “My work makes reference to ‘others’, whoever ‘they’ may be and how one way of ‘inclusion’ of difference has been brought about by destroying the culture of ‘others’,” she says.

Last year, in Helsinki, Delaine created the multi-media installation Gypsy Revolution in collaboration with her husband, Damian, and elements of that work are being exhibited as part of Black Butterflies.

“Gypsy Revolution sets out to educate the general public about the history of their community, slavery, transportation, mass genocide, alongside the lists of activists, writers, artists and other academics who come from the community but whose ‘profiles’ do not fit the stereotype and so remain ‘hidden’ in history,” says Robert.

Daniel Baker, a Romani Gypsy artist, curator and researcher and former chairman of the Gypsy Council, uses mirrored and gilded panels to explore how gypsies are perceived by others and how they choose to represent themselves.

By ‘vandalising’ traditional images of gypsy identity with spray paint and marker pen, Baker’s work exposes two categories of representation: the first as romanticised nomad, the second as hated and aggressive traveller.

Robert Teed and co-director Paula Jackson hope the exhibition will encourage a positive discourse. They are organising a series of public talks, workshops and events. Dates and details can be found online at schoolhousegallery.co.uk

• Black Butterflies: Roma Gipsy Art & Identity runs at the New School House Gallery, Peasholme Green, York, until March 2. The exhibition is supported by Arts Council England and is being shown in partnership with Amnesty and the York Travellers Trust. The travelling community is one of the largest ethnic minorities in York. A CD of Roma music, Roma Rights, is on sale at the exhibition.

• Did you know?

The exhibition title Black Butterflies refers to the emblems scratched into the walls of the Nazi death camps by Romani, Sinti and Gypsy prisoners.