Lesley Halliwell: AFTERGLOW at New Art Spaces Chester

Dates: 8 – 29 December
Venue: CASC Gallery at Castlefield Gallery New Art Spaces: Chester, Unit 16, Grosvenor Shopping Centre, CH1 1EA

AFTERGLOW presents a series of paintings that explore the nuances of pattern and the reflective surface. It marks the first time Halliwell has worked with silver leaf on such a large scale. She notes that what she enjoys about using new materials is their capacity to surprise. For instance, she hadn’t anticipated that under the artificial lighting of the shopping centre, the silver leaf’s highly reflective quality would flatten; absorbing the surrounding light, it can appear almost white and matte instead of metallic. In contrast, when natural winter sunshine filters through the roof lights, the surface responds dramatically – the gilded silver leaf reflects the light, heightening its luminosity and disrupting the geometry. Each of the three larger panels floats slightly away from the wall. They have been back-painted, and closer inspection reveals a subtle halo of colour cast onto the surrounding space. The combination of gilded surfaces and projected light creates a quiet interplay between the surface and the wall, evoking ideas of aura and memory. Over time, the silver leaf will slowly tarnish, deepening in tone – an ongoing, visible transformation that speaks to time, change, and the question of when a work is ever truly finished.

Lesley Halliwell is a British visual artist based in Chester whose work explores repetition, pattern, and simple geometric form. She studied Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University (BA Hons Fine Art, 1989), followed by an MA in History of Art at Goldsmiths College, London (1995), and an MA in Fine Art at Manchester Metropolitan University (2001). Her recent doctoral research (2016-2021) at Manchester Metropolitan University focused on the notion of “surface” – how what we see on the picture plane emerges from underlying structures. Halliwell has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions, most recently with Spirograph Reimagined, a large scale light animation commissioned for Light Night Leeds 2025. Other notable exhibitions include The 9 th Drawing Paper Show, Bridewell Studios, Liverpool; Drawing In Breathing Out, Rogue Artists’ Studios, Manchester; Beauty is the First Test, Pumphouse Gallery, London; The Drawing Show, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester; Jerwood Drawing Prize; Superabundant, Turner Contemporary, Margate; Pattern Recognition, Leicester City Art Gallery; Bloomberg’s New Contemporaries, Static, Liverpool & The Barbican, London).