The gallery's opening was part of a multimillion-pound redevelopment of the former site of the Tetley Brewery in Leeds. The owners, Carlsberg-Tetley has ceased ale and beer production at the site in 2011, and most of the buildings on the land were razed and the site given over to a new housing development. However, the historic original headquarters of Tetley's was retained to provide commercial office space and, in 2013, space to rehouse an existing contemporaryart space operating in Leeds, called Project Space Leeds. Upon its move into the former Tetley headquarters, Project Space Leeds was renamed The Tetley, and took on the specific brief of operating as an equivalent in Leeds to the Cornerhouse in Manchester and Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead. The refurbishment of the building for the arts centre was overseen by the co-directors of Project Space Leeds, Pippa Hale and Kerry Harker, and Chris Walker of Esh Construction, with partial funding from the Arts Council England. In January 2016 Bryony Bond, a former curator at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester was appointed the new Creative Director of The Tetley. The Tetley art space has a lease on the building until 2023.
Exhibitions
The Tetley's opening exhibitions involved a number of artists responding to the history and space of the new building under the general title 'A New Reality'. This included James Clarkson, Emma Rushton, Derek Tyman, Simon Lewandowski, Sam Belinfante, and Rehana Zaman. In 2015 an exhibition was held, titled 'Painting in Time', looking at contemporary painting and its relationship to other media used by artists, including work by artists such as Yoko Ono, Natasha Kidd, Claire Ashley, Jessica Warboys and Polly Appleborn. An exhibition staged at the Tetley in 2016 recreated a controversial exhibition by the Cypriot artist Stass Paraskos, originally held in Leeds in 1966. Entitled 'Lovers and Romances' the original show at the Leeds Institute Gallery was closed down by the police and the artist charged with displaying obscene and corrupting images under the Vagrancy Acts of 1824 and 1838. The exhibition at the Tetley marked the fiftieth anniversary of the original Paraskos Trial. Also in 2016, the Tetley staged a solo exhibition of work by the London-based sculptor Jonathan Trayte, comprising vegetables and fruits made of ceramic and other sculptural materials, entitled 'Polyculture'.
