Cheshire artist Sharon Lelonek has presented an eye-popping drawing to Chester’s Grosvenor Museum.
Cllr Louise Gittins, Cheshire West and Chester Council’s cabinet member for communities and wellbeing, said: “Sharon Lelonek’s drawing ‘Spiral 1’ is a magnificent work – big and bold, dramatic and thrillingly complex.
“It has an immediate and powerful impact, but also repays close scrutiny, revealing surprising subtleties as rhythms are disturbed and expectations are subverted. It is quite unlike any other drawing in the collection, and I am very grateful to Sharon Lelonek for so generously donating it to the museum.”
Sharon Lelonek said: “I made ‘Spiral 1’ in 2005, when I was a mature student at the University of Chester. I drew the elements of the composition using a permanent black marker pen and ruler, then cut out and collaged multiple photocopies.
“I use abstract geometrical patterns, repetition and line to explore the perception of space. In ‘Spiral 1’ I wanted the regularly repeated shapes to attract the attention and challenge the eye.
“The viewer is invited to explore the work’s visual properties, to investigate the spaces which the shapes create, and to be drawn into the patterns which suggest dimensions beyond the surface.”
Sharon Lelonek’s ‘Spiral 1’ is currently on display in the Grosvenor Museum’s exhibition ‘Modern Drawings: Vision and Temperament’, which runs until January 15.
Selected from the museum’s collection by Dr Tom McGuirk, senior lecturer in fine art at the University of Chester, this exhibition explores the fascinating variety of modern drawings.
Dr McGuirk said: “Sharon Lelonek succeeds in her aim of drawing the viewer into the patterns, yet the collaged elements of ‘Spiral 1’ also provoke a contradictory impulse to pull back and examine this intricate structure more objectively as though it were an unearthly puzzle, with perhaps some pieces tantalisingly missing.”
Sharon Lelonek (née Dunville) was born in Northwich in 1967 and lives in the nearby village of Rudheath. She has a BA in fine art from the University of Chester and was awarded the Valedictory Prize on her graduation in 2007. Sharon leads non-toxic innovative printmaking workshops in Cheshire and works in collaboration with Wearpurple Arts, run by Age UK Cheshire. She is a member of Markmakers, Halton’s contemporary arts collective, and has exhibited extensively in Cheshire and beyond.
The Grosvenor Museum is open Monday-Saturday 10.30am–5pm and Sunday 1-4pm, admission free, donations welcome. It is closed on December 22-26 and January 1.
