Friday 21 April 2017

Bologna Children's Book Fair 2017

My fifth Bologna Children's Book Fair was very exciting. It offered many wonderful exhibitions, both inside and outside the fair, and interesting new ways of displaying illustrations. The Illustrators exhibition was showcased on tables instead of walls. I will share a selection of photos from this exhibition in my next post. The talks I went to were great too, including the one by Juan Palomino, the winner of the International Award for Illustration 2016, an insightful conference about books on art featuring Isabel Arsenault and Klaas Verplancke and an entertaining meeting with six children's laureates with live drawing by two amazing artists Chris Riddell (UK) and PJ Lynch (Ireland). 

A new addition to the fair this year was the Illustrators' Survival Corner, which offered a good range of masterclasses, workshops and portfolio reviews with an exciting selection of Italian and international artists. As expected, the queues to sign up for these events were quite long as you had to get there early in the mornings, but I was lucky to attend a sketching workshop with Chris Riddell, who was drawing portraits of illustrators while the rest were sketching around him. The fair is also a fantastic opportunity to network and catch up with friends, who live in different countries such as Estonia, Spain, Korea and Taiwan, but all share the same passion for children's books.

The Fiction category winner of Ragazzi Awards was delicately illustrated by Oliver Jeffers 

Artworks from the Opera Prima winner by Emma Lewis were also selected in the Illustrators exhibition

Non-Fiction category award went to William Grill's book, published by Flying Eye Books


The New Horizons winner, illustrated by Alejandra Acosta, and the two special mentions on the right


The book fair had many inspiring exhibitions this year

Artwork of Rotraut Susanne Berner, the 2016 Hans Christian Andersen award winner

Juan Palomino, the 8th International Award for Illustration winner, had a really impressive exhibition

Juan Palomino illustrated a Mayan myth about the creation of world and man

The new display of the Illustrators exhibition invited the viewers to see the art from the jury's perspective

The guest of honour exhibition had been displayed on these hammocks to enjoy while resting

Beautiful illustrations from the Silent Book contest

A fabulous selection of Taiwanese art in one of the big halls

I found illustrations of my talented MA friends Chen-Ying Lu, Shu-Ti Liao and Jo Shin Lee on the same wall

Gorgeous vintage pop-up books next to the Illustrators' Survival Corner

Some of the intricate pop-up books on display at the fair

Illustrators' Survival Corner was organized together with Mimaster Illustration

Chris Riddell surrounded by a group of enthusiastic illustrators during the drawing workshop

Viola Wang, a Cambridge School of Art student, explaining her digital work method

One of my posters with the little prince on a busy Illustrators' Wall

The big bookshop at the fair was replaced with a small one, which had these nice books


No comments:

Post a Comment