April 2025

In 2024 Pete Thornley, the artist responsible for projecting huge images of local people on to the Cemex Tower 25 years ago, approached Rugby Art Gallery and Museum with the idea to create an installation for the huge foyer space of the Rugby Art Gallery and Museum.

The result is an installation called AD ASTRA 25 and links directly to Pete’s use of multimedia works and his influences over the last 25 years.

Pete says, 

“ I decided to use two quotes for my installation AD ASTRA 25 from two films which influenced me and my work from the first time I saw them in the late 1960s: 2001,A Space Odyssey(1968)and Easy Rider(1969).”

“The quotes from the films hark back to the past and point to the future. Ad Astra means ‘’towards the stars’ and has been used throughout history in the arts and philosophy."

Pete has exhibited every year at the RAGM galleries since the Galleries inception in 2000 and the installation is accompanied by a retropective exhibition of Pete's work in the Floor 1 Galleries called ‘Bending on the Left Side of Reality'.  
April 1 - 14th 2025.