Exhibition Gallery 2

 

28 June – 31 August
Chester Mystery Plays 

If you are planning to take part in the fabulous experience of seeing the 2008 Chester Mystery Plays, why not come and discover the history behind them?

Exploring the history of the Mysteries, you can learn more about Chester Guilds, their role in the plays and get a feel for how Chester would have looked when they were first produced.  You will be able to see ephemera from the 20th century revival, costumes, models of the 2008 set and images from this year’s rehearsal.  Most importantly you will get a rare opportunity to see some of the original manuscripts of the plays produced and preserved by the Guilds.

6 September - 16 November
Representation & Abstraction: Contemporary Art from the Collection

Do you think that a picture should look like a photograph?  Do you think that abstract art is meaningless?  Visit Chester’s Grosvenor Museum and think again!  “Representation & Abstraction:  Contemporary Art from the Collection”, a new exhibition between Saturday 6 September and Sunday 16 November, aims to challenge such ideas.

Peter Boughton, the museum’s Keeper of Art, said:  “Representational art portrays, in however altered or distorted a form, things perceived in the visible world.  Abstract art is either completely non-representational, or converts forms observed in reality into patterns which are read primarily as independent relationships, rather than referring to the original source.  The tension between representation and abstraction has been a major theme in the history of modern art, and provides a useful framework within which to view the works shown here.”

The exhibition presents 29 pictures by 20 artists, drawn from the Grosvenor Museum’s collection of local contemporary art.  Acquired since 1992 from artists in Cheshire, Wirral and North Wales, this celebrates the quality and variety of the region’s artistic creativity.  The exhibition vividly demonstrates the remarkable range of this collection, with strongly contrasting choices of media and handling, and radically different approaches to subject and style, evoking strikingly varied emotional and intellectual responses.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a wide range of events. 

There will be a lecture on ‘A Pastoral Idyll? Images of Landscape in Western Art’ by Maggie Jackson on 17 September; 
a pen and ink drawing workshop with Claire and Loren Somerville on 11 October; 
a lecture on ‘Francis Bacon’s Art of Distortion’ by Dr Rina Arya on 14 October; 
creative writing with Mike Hardman on 19 October; 
half-term workshops for children and families from 27-31 October; 
a lecture on ‘Driven to Abstraction’ by Adrian Sumner on 5 November; 
a botanical illustration workshop with Moira Rae Carter on 8 November; 
and a guided tour of the exhibition with Peter Boughton on 12 November.