DEEP in the Durham countryside, where once hundreds of pits extracted the coal that powered Britain’s imperial dominance, is an exhibition of political art of staggering size and ambition. 

The Shafts Of Light show is on at the lookalike French chateau near Barnard Castle which is the Bowes Museum. It’s crammed full of paintings, china, tapestries and furniture from all corners of the globe. 

The building and exhibits were funded by the Bowes-Lyon family, whose most famous offspring was the Queen Mother, who were once renowned too for being fabulously wealthy coalowners. 

The family is still wealthy, though no longer coalowners, while the local pit village communities which laboured to produce that wealth for them have lost their connection with mining. 

Yet they are still in the same position, struggling to manage on subsistence incomes. Some things don’t change, is the first political lesson this giant exhibition tells us.

It’s a collection of mining art by the men and women who produced the wealth of the Bowes-Lyons family and others like them and thus its very location is in itself an ironic comment on art and wealth. 

This is art from the heart, displayed in a building and among collections which were bought by the coalowner Bowes for his wife, a hobby artist. It’s set up in a darker room, contrasting with the other galleries in the building, and feels something like a pitface.

The exhibition is the first major attempt since 1980 to bring together some of the best examples of mining art from the last 200 years and from a large variety of artists, men and women. 

Most worked in the pits of the north east, so this is vernacular art based on the workers’ experiences.

What’s on show is in marked contrast with the other paintings in the museum but they are just as skilfully composed and executed. Technically and aesthetically brilliant, they have a powerful emotional, spiritual and political impact — Miner And Child by Tom McGuinness, very much in the Madonna And Child tradition, is but one example.

There are drawings and paintings using oils, acrylics, ink wash and even boot polish. There are visions, laments and celebrations of the workplace which are painted with compassion, affection, hope and humour, including some outstanding works by Norman Cornish and Tom McGuinness. 

The panels accompanying the paintings are informative and avoid artspeak and the comprehensive book on mining art by the curators of the exhibition Robert McManners and Gillian Wales is also well worth a read.

Included in the show are a few clay and bronze sculptures and some fine miners’ banners, including the famous Chopwell banner depicting Lenin and Marx. Others represent womens’ support groups from the 1984 miners’ strike and the Durham miners’ gala day parade. 

If you’re visiting the Big Meeting in Durham on July 12, it’s well worth making a detour to see this show in this 30th anniversary year of the strike. 

Shafts Of Light runs until September 21 at the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, entrance £8.50. Details: www.thebowesmuseum.org.uk.