Exhibitions - January 19 onwards

Jan 15 2012 by Michael Green, Chester Chronicle

EXHIBITIONS

CHESTER: January 28-May 7 - Colourful Impressions: The Joy of Modern Prints - this exhibition at Grosvenor Museum’s Exhibition Gallery One presents the museum’s large and rich collection of modern prints including work by David Hockney, John Piper, Patrick Heron and Eduardo Paolozzi as well as contemporary artists from Cheshire and North Wales. Exploring a wide range of techniques, styles and subjects, it celebrates the remarkable diversity of British printmaking over the past 60 years.

CHESTER: January 14-April 1 - The Head That Wears The Crown: Decoding Royal Portraits in Chester - this exhibition at Grosvenor Museum’s Exhibition Gallery Two decodes the representation of the monarchy and monarchs through their portraits, considers the political and social context of the times in which they were made and explores Chester’s long relationship with the Crown.

CHESTER: January 12-February 24 - Fastnet and Dogger - Fastnet and Dogger are Laurie Lax, Robert Prideaux, Eliot Sargeantson and Mathew Denniss showing new work including drawings, videos, maps, writings, sounds lights quarries, caves sandstone, mud and fog at Contemporary Art Space Chester, University of Chester Faculty of Arts and NMedia, Kingsway. Call 01244 515870 or visit www.chester.ac.uk/casc.

CHESTER: January 9-March 30 - Lunatics, Lovers, Poets and More - quirky and unusual exhibition looking at some of the curious and remarkable characters who have visited, lived or worked in Chester over the centuries, from charming eccentrics to martyrs, witches and intrepid inventors, at Chester History and Heritage Centre.

CHESTER: October 31-January 27 - Spotlight on Upton - revealing the story of Upton’s development from Domesday to leafy suburbia, this photographic exhibition has been produced by the Upton Local History Group and can be seen at Chester History and Heritage Centre.

CHESTER: July 23-July 1 2012 - Fifties Frocks: Female Fashion from the 1950s - an exhibition of day and evening dresses, cocktail and dance dresses, ranging from the Parisian haute couture of Dior and Jacques Fath to those made in Wilmslow and Liverpool, at Grosvenor Museum’s Costume Gallery.

MANCHESTER: January 14-February 19 - Creative Stars: Lost is Found - Lost is Found is a group show of work from nine artists based in the North of England. The exhibited works find beauty in the redundant and discarded, explore past lives and find new stories in transformations and fleeting identities. Displacement of identity, relics of childhood, secret desires, fragments of memory and traces of history are brought to life through sculpture, photography, installation and drawing. Curated and developed by the Creative Stars, 19 talented young people from the Greater Manchester region, the exhibition can be seen at Cornerhouse in Oxford Street. Visit www.cornerhouse.org or call 0161 200 1500.

MANCHESTER: December 21-January 31 - Fresh from graduating in Art & Design at Manchester Metropolitan University, Bethany Gray presents a selection of her most recent paintings. Her practice is interested in the theatrical ambiguity and potential narrative content of still landscape. She uses vivid brush strokes and a highly distinctive palette of colours to create dramatic atmospheres and experiences, at Cornerhouse in Oxford Street. Visit www.cornerhouse.org or call 0161 200 1500.

MANCHESTER: September 22-January 29 - Ford Madox Brown: Pre-Raphaelite Pioneer at Manchester Art Gallery in Mosley Street. Call 0161 235 8888 or visit www.manchestergalleries.org.uk.

MOLD: January 3-21 - Raising The Ramparts - interpretations of Iron Age hillforts in the Clwydian Range and Llanysilio Mountains, in the Community Gallery at Clwyd Theatr Cymru. Call 0845 330 3565 or visit www.clwyd-theatr-cymru.co.uk.

WREXHAM: February 3-March 31 - My Giant Colouring Book by Jake and Dinos Chapman - The Chapman brothers first came to prominence as part of the young British artists movement of the 1990s and caused outrage in 2003 when they painted their own ghoulish imagery over an original set of Goya paintings. They return to this method of work, this time appropriating join-the-dot drawings from a children’s picture book, at Oriel Wrecsam, fford Rhosddu. Call 01978 292093 or visit www.wrexham.gov.uk/arts.