Exhibitions
Foxlowe Galleries and Exhibitions
The Foxlowe Arts Centre has three exhibition spaces, the Gallery on the first floor, Cafe gallery in the Drawing Room cafe and spaces in the buildings ground floor hallways.
The Gallery open Wednesday – Saturday, 10am – 4pm
current exhibitionHosting around 6-8 exhibitions a year, usually running for 6 weeks The Gallery is always worth visiting. The Gallery is completely staffed by volunteer stewards.
Drawing Room Gallery open Monday – Saturday, 10am – 4pm
Current ExhibitionThe Cafe Gallery holds a variety of smaller exhibitions of local artists along the cafe walls.
Hallway Gallery open Monday – Saturday, 10am – 4pm
The exhibitions in the Hallways of the Foxlowe are often displays of local school artwork featuring a topic or theme, the relationships with the schools is looked after by volunteers from the Foxlowe Arts Centre.
The Upper Gallery
Foxlowe Arts Centre’s main exhibition space
Kevin Bowcock - Retrospective Exhibition, the Upper Gallery | Saturday 4th October to Saturday 15th November
Kevin Bowcock – Retrospective Exhibition
Foxlowe Arts Centre Upper Gallery
Ex council worker’s retrospective painting and drawing exhibition.
Born in Leek in 1948, Kevin spent his life there, apart from a spell in France in 1966 pursuing a romantic dream. Educated at East Street Primary School and then at Mountside Secondary Modern School he showed an early aptitude for art entering paintings to the Leek & District Arts Club Children’s Exhibitions from 1959 to 1964 consistently gaining top prizes and also BBC Television ‘Sketch Club’. In his final year at Mountside he attended day release classes at Leek School of Art and Crafts and then in 1963, aged 15, become a full-time student at the School of Art.
Work, then at the school, covered a range of crafts with a distinct emphasis on drawing, especially life drawing, taught in a very traditional way. Then among the lecturers he encountered would have been; Arthur Littlewood (Principal), Eric England, Pam Littlewood, Clare Heath, Barbara Hutchinson and Roger Hampton…
Talented, Kevin not only produced work that reflected views, places and characters of Leek during a particular time but then developed a more personal, idiosyncratic approach sometimes autobiographical and provocative, sometimes mysterious and visionary, always interesting, never complacent. Kevin died of lung cancer in 2017
The exhibition will run from Saturday 4th October to Saturday 15th November.
The Gallery will be open from Wednesday to Saturday, 10am to 4pm each week, and the first Sunday in each month, 11am to 4pm.
Carole Cluer, the Drawing Room Gallery | Sat 11 Sept to Sat 6 Nov 2021
“Graphite Drawings by Carole Cluer”
Welcome to Foxlowe Art Centre’s Drawing Room’s third exhibition of 2021.
Carole Cluer is an artist based in a village in Staffordshire
Primarily working in graphite pencil she hopes that her realistic drawings will encourage the viewer to consider life from a different point of view. She enjoys creating different series of work that will focus on a subject that is always close to her heart.
Social Life Series
Whilst on holiday in Spain Carole noticed three women paddling, fully made up and wearing glamorous jewellery, they were holding hands and laughing.
No waiting to fit into a size 10 before venturing on to the beach for them, they were busy loving life. She began to notice the lack of phones and gadgets, and the predominance of fun.
This light hearted series considers how life is in danger of being lived through social media and highlights how a full life goes on beyond selfies, hashtags and likes.
Because we are all beach ready…
The Kintsugi Series
An ongoing series focussing on portraits of people who have physical scars. However it is not the scars that are of primary importance rather the sitter’s relationship with them and the events surrounding them.
The work is a celebration of the passge of life and the traces it leaves behind on us all and how our imperfections can lead to a new, more authentic and substantive beauty.
The Kintsugi series invites the viewer to look within their own life to consider their own physical and emotional scars, to reevaluate their own self-image and to recognise a connection with others.
Carole Cluer
