{"id":1147,"date":"2025-02-19T16:09:13","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T16:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artscharitydeanclough.org\/?page_id=1147"},"modified":"2026-08-31T09:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T09:52:11","slug":"previous-exhibitions","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/artscharitydeanclough.org\/?page_id=1147","title":{"rendered":"Previous Exhibitions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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FRANK LAWSON – JOHN LENNON
THE SHORT LINK GALLERY
27TH MAY 2026 – 25TH AUGUST 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Originally from the North East of England but now living in Halifax, Frank Lawson was just 15 years old and still at school when he met and photographed John Lennon at his Surrey home during the summer holidays in August 1967.
Though being a Beatles fan well before they met, the six images document a fleeting encounter between Frank and John and are accompanied by a written account of Frank\u2019s fascination with the band that spans over sixty years.
The images have never appeared in a public exhibition until now and show the relationship that one of the most iconic names in music had with his fans.
A chance meeting with photographer Peter Defty, who has a studio at Dean Clough Mills in Halifax, resulted in a collaboration to produce a limited edition of both archival quality Silver Gelatin and gicl\u00e9e prints, which will be launched in August at this year\u2019s International Beatles Convention in Liverpool.
Frank has kindly donated a signed, framed print to the Dean Clough Photography collection, sited in the same space as the exhibition, it contains original prints from photographers including Martin Parr, Ian Beesley, Kate Mellor and Charlie Meecham amongst others.
A number of signed gicl\u00e9e prints are available to purchase from Dean Clough reception.<\/summary>\n

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CLAIRE MURRAY – A LIGHT TO MY PATH
THE UPSTAIRS & MOSAIC GALLERIES
27TH JUNE – 16TH AUGUST 2026<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
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\u2018I have been painting the landscape for many years now, and my last exhibition in 2025\/26 was titled \u2018Grounded\u2019, a reference to the natural and elemental appearance of the earth and our environments.  In this exhibition, \u2018A Light to my Path\u2019, I explore the earthly and spiritual aspects more deeply, searching ideas of lightness and darkness using landscape as a metaphor.
Binaries such as hope and despair, belief and non-belief, sickness and health, or even perhaps good and evil are addressed. The depiction of traditional British landscape in paintings has evolved according to artistic movements, shifting aesthetics, tastes, as well as cultural and political changes. My paintings can\u2019t help but pivot somewhere on the knife-edge between beauty and oblivion, utopia and apocalypse.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Claire Murray is an expressive painter based in Fletcher\u2019s Mill, Dean Clough in Halifax.  Claire has been painting for 37 years, teaching art, exhibiting and running her own studio practice, and has work in private collections internationally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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JEFFREY ANDREWS – THE DRAWING IS NOT THE OBJECT
THE TINY GALLERY
27TH JUNE 2026 – 16TH AUGUST 2026<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
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Jeffrey Andrews makes site specific installations that respond to architectural spaces, local history and the environment. These large-scale, monumental, public artworks are constructed in partnership with galleries, museums and communities.
He works principally in drawing, sculpture, photography and film and is interested in the relationship between three-dimensional objects and their two-dimensional representation. These artworks draw inspiration from everyday domestic objects and inherited items, raising questions about perception, design, cultural icons and the nature of our emotional attachments to them.
Since studying at London\u2019s Slade School of Fine Art, he has had a long-standing fascination with how objects are translated into two-dimensions, \u201cMost people would call this drawing; but for Jeffrey it might involve smothering Battersea Arts Centre or London\u2019s Riverside Studios in recycled hospital sheets and rendering them as gigantic monochrome rubbings. You could define a picture as a three-dimensional object presented in two-dimensions \u2013 but this is literally what he achieves with his unwrapped works. That\u2019s the joy of them.\u201d – Vic Allen (Former Arts Director).
More recently, toasters, cheese graters, trumpets, violins, guitars and telephone boxes are wrapped in linen and rubbed with oil pastels or graphite to replicate the texture and shapes that are enfolded. The unwrapped artwork reveals an honest interpretation of the primary form in two-dimensions. This physical deconstruction presents the viewer with multiple perspectives within a single composition.
Based in the renowned art studios at Dean Clough Mills in Halifax, West Yorkshire. His work can be found in public and private collections across the UK and Europe.
Original artwork and limited edition prints are available for purchase.
Please get in touch if you would like to know more or arrange a studio visit.
www.jeffreyandrews.co.uk<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE BRIGHTSIDE ARTS CLUB CAF\u00c9<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE FOCUS WALL 6TH JULY – 9TH AUGUST 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Arts Charity at Dean Clough is proud to exhibit the work of a special group of amateur artists. Brightside Arts Club Caf\u00e9 is a unique Arts Club and caf\u00e9 for people diagnosed with dementia and their
carers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Each first Thursday morning of the month, members undertake a range of art activities taught by ACDC artist, Fiona Edmondson. The sessions are accompanied by soft live music and refreshments.
Companionship, cakes and creativity await members in Fletcher\u2019s Mill, Dean Clough, facilitated by The ArtsCharity at Dean Clough (ACDC) in conjunction with Age UK\u2019s Dementia Hub.
Age UK Dementia Hub partners ACDC to invite membership of the Arts Club Caf\u00e9.
To become a Brightside member please contact:
Lisa Berrett
Community Engagement Officer
Calderdale Dementia Hub
Age UK Calderdale & Kirklees
Mobile 07513 727441
4-6 Square, Woolshops, Halifax, HX1 1RJ<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ANALOGUE 10 – THE ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY
THE PHOTOGRAPHY GALLERY
18TH APRIL 2026 – 2ND AUGUST 2026<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
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The Analogue Special Interest Group of the Royal Photographic Society is one of the fastest growing parts of the RPS and the largest formal group dedicated to Analogue (film, darkroom and alternative processes) in the UK. This exhibition shows this dynamic group\u2019s work and showcases the qualities of traditional photography techniques that many photographers are now either returning to from digital or discovering for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Analogue photography is thriving in 2026. More than 2 decades ago the digital camera became a ubiquitous artifact, and predictions were made that \u201cTraditional\u201d photography would simply disappear. In fact, during those 20 or so years analogue photography has evolved into a separate art form, where \u201cSeeing the image\u201d isn\u2019t enough, the photographer also must \u201cSee the way\u201d of producing that image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In this exhibition we see the work of some of the best practitioners of analogue photography, not only traditional silver gelatin prints but also cyanotypes, wet plate images, intaglio, kallitypes and salt prints, lith prints and the more accessible hybrid (film to digital) images. We see the work of photographers who have recently discovered analogue techniques as well as those of us who remained faithful to our art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For anyone wanting to see first-hand and understand the attraction of Analogue processes then this exhibition is a must for them, but also of great interest to other photographers and the general public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To miss-quote Mark Twain: \u201cRumours of the death of analogue photography have been greatly exaggerated\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Louis Benoit
<\/strong>Mechanical Animal<\/em>
<\/em>The Upstairs and Mosaic Galleries
28th March – 31st May 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Preview 31st January 12-2pm All Welcome<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The idea of a mechanical animal suggests a kind of uneasy fusion\u2014creatures shaped by instinct but held together by something more rigid, more imposed. It\u2019s a title that speaks to adaptation, survival, and the tension between inner life and external structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Louis Benoit\u2019s drawings are immediate, instinctive, and deeply personal. His animals, often hybrid, often uneasy, feel like they\u2019ve been pulled straight from the gut. There\u2019s no polish here, no attempt to smooth things over. Instead, Benoit leans into the rawness: the awkward limbs, the tangled expressions, the sense that something is trying to make itself understood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s something of Ralph Steadman in the energy, ink that feels flung rather than placed and forms that resist containment. But where Steadman\u2019s chaos is often satirical, Benoit\u2019s is quieter, more internal. His experience of autism shapes the way he sees and communicates. Rather than working through conventional language, Benoit builds a visual vocabulary that\u2019s entirely his own. The drawings don\u2019t explain themselves. They don\u2019t need to. They speak in gesture, in texture, in the space between control and release. There\u2019s a quiet dignity to the work. It simply exists\u2014honest, unresolved, and full of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Philip Booth<\/strong>
Breathing Out Slowly<\/em>
The Crossley Gallery
21st February – 24th May 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In Zen, full attentiveness is found in the slow exhale \u2014 a principle mirrored in my work, which invites sustained looking and rewards repeated encounters. Rooted in early conceptual art, lightly baroque in tone, and with an inherent critique of the purely gestural, the work explores our layered and often fractured relationship with nature. It challenges the perceived divide between humankind and the natural world, while also celebrating nature\u2019s richness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drawing is often the starting point, especially in landscapes with an \u201cedge of the world\u201d quality\u2014places of collision and tension. These encounters evolve through a process of invention and integration, resulting in abstract forms that suggest geology and natural forces without replicating them. The work engages myth, assemblage, and makes reference to an expansive range of material, creating a space that moves outward from the wall toward the viewer, echoing the experience of landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meticulous and contemplative, yet intricate and dynamic, the work seeks to express vital matter beyond anthropocentrism\u2014foregrounding nature\u2019s agency over human control. It operates in the space between mathematics and art, geometry and flow, abstraction and figuration, experience and myth. My practice is primarily studio-based, with additional work in commissions, landscape design, and public art. My work is held in private collections across the UK, EU, and Japan, and in the British Museum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Vibe Arts<\/strong>
Fur and Feathers
<\/em>The Focus Wall
4th April – 27th May 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vibe Arts are an art collective of three ladies who not only share studio space and a love of art but also share their love of natural health and wellness, all three being holistic therapists. Bringing these practices into their art and allowing the power of peacefulness, and a little serendipity, to guide their art flow. They take every opportunity presented to them to immerse themselves in art and <healing> adventures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Connecting with nature and with each other brings them inspiration for their creativity. Each artist has an individual style which can be discovered in their themed collection, Fur & Feathers, which brings together their love of the animal kingdom, folklore and the spiritual meanings each animal brings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of their shared <loves> is reflecting on spirit or totem animal meanings. Whether spiritually or symbolically, the animal kingdom offers us a way to connect more deeply with nature and our own instincts, reminding us that meaning can often be found in the natural world around us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through this body of work, they also explore the idea of hunter and hunted – the instinct to survive within a world that can be both beautiful and unforgiving. We are reminded that – unlike humans – animals hunt solely for survival, never for excess or personal gain, honouring a balance that nature instinctively protects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These magnificent animals represent more than beauty – they reveal the intricate interconnectedness of all life on our precious planet – physically, spiritually and symbolically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vibe Arts are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n