Award-winning Banbury area gallery reopens with 'prestigious photography exhibition'

The Heseltine Gallery, which has been closed since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, will reopen on September 27 with a 'prestigious exhibition' by members of the Royal Photographic Society’s Visual Art Group.

The exhibition features 114 photographic prints in traditional and contemporary styles and explores a variety of subject matter from still-life and landscape to portraiture and macro. The Visual Art Group is one of the RPS’s leading special interest groups with nearly 1,000 members across the world and roots going back over 100 years.

Roger Neill, chair of the Friends of the Heseltine Gallery, who run the gallery as a community art hub, said: “We are excited to be reopening the Heseltine Gallery with this important photography exhibition after eighteen long months of lockdowns and Coronavirus restrictions.

“We have been organising exhibitions online over the past year and a half but there is no substitute for encountering art in a real space. We hope that our website visitors and social media followers will take this opportunity to return to the gallery and get up close to some outstanding works of art.”

The Heseltine Gallery closed at the start of the pandemic in March 2020 but was able to move its exhibitions and activities online, thanks to a grant from South (now West) Northamptonshire Council, which funded a gallery website and project management support. The website had nearly 13,500 visits in its first year and was praised for its programme of online exhibitions exploring the impact of lockdown on people’s artistic and personal lives.

In July 2021, The Heseltine Gallery won the Muddy Stilettos Award for Best Art Gallery in Northamptonshire.

The Royal Photographic Society Visual Art Group members print exhibition runs at the Heseltine Gallery from 27 September to 22 October 2021, open daily from 10am to 4pm. Admission is free.

For more information, visit www.theheseltinegallery.org.uk.