AN EXCITING new gallery has been established in Chester city centre to provide a space for the exhibition and sale of regionally-created arts, crafts and photography.

The Handel’s Court Gallery, above Joseph Benjamin restaurant in Northgate Street, will also act as a base for a wide range of courses and workshops.

Photographer Steve Howe, who has relocated into the gallery from nearby Rufus Court, said: “It aims to provide local artists and buyers with a ‘shop window’ in the heart of Chester’s cultural Northgate Quarter and close to the City Walls.

“From the start, responses from artists and art lovers alike to the new project have been overwhelmingly positive and enthusiastic.”

Steve, from Hoole, said since the demise of the Chester Arts & Recreation Trust at the end of the 1970s, the need for an art space in Chester had been expressed on many occasions.

He commented: “With goodwill, this need will hopefully now be met by the Handel’s Court Gallery – ‘a gallery for artists, run by artists’.”

Among the featured exhibitors is city-based artist Spencer Derry, who wrote to the Duke of Westminster in 2003 appealing for him to invest in a public art gallery for Chester.

He and Stephen Langtree of Chester Civic Trust also set up the Art for Art’s Sake group with the aim of establishing an arts centre in the city.

Spencer, who studied art and design at West Cheshire Art College and gained a degree from Hull School of Art, is accomplished in many genres of art from landscape paintings, surrealism, erotic/fantasy and portrait drawings.

For more information, visit: www.hcgallery.co.uk or call 01244 313700.