Since I had a chance to see both of the MA Children’s Book Illustration graduation shows, which took place in London last month and later at the Cambridge School of Art too, I thought it would be selfish of me not to share some photos of the things that caught my eye. By the way, this small selection is less than a half of the artists that exhibited this year.
The Cambridge exhibition at the lovely Ruskin gallery featured mostly the illustration prints and a few dummy book and sketchbook examples in glass cabinets. It was much smaller than the one in London, but was equally beautiful and inspiring. I was excited to look through the amazing artwork again and noticed a few I missed in the London show. We will certainly see some of these incredible talents in bookshops soon. Please enjoy!
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| Sally Walker, Greta Haaz, Anna Gordillo, Lucy Morris, Jacqueline Rayner |
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| Jessica Meserve, Roxana de Rond and Tzu-Li Kuo |
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| Laura Casella |
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| Rachel Stubbs, Elina Ellis and Sylvia Liang |
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| Tommy Fry and Lucy Dillamore |
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| Mrinali Alvarez and Federica Muià |
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| Aining Wen and Cho Ye Seul |
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| Agata Pankowska, Phoebe Swan and Ivonne Vargas |
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| Beth Waters |
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| David Lambourne and Nien-Chen Yang |
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| Duncan Annand |
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| James Andrew Howard and Julia Maisen |
I enjoyed the marvelous London exhibition together with a small group of my MA friends. This year the degree show expanded over two floors of the Candid Arts Trust gallery to accommodate the fabulous work of 75 graduates. The details of all the exhibitors can be found on the official MA Show
website. The London exhibition had so many things on display it was challenging to see everything in one go, but it offered a unique chance to look through the original sketchbooks, read the wonderful dummy books, adore the handmade toys and also leave encouraging comments for the graduates.
I noticed lots of beautiful nonfiction, such as the delicate nature-inspired printmaking by Josephine Birch, brilliant biography of a British mathematician Ada by Anna Doherty and the funny family encyclopaedia by Sawanee Draw, documenting various vintage objects and her mother's childhood. There were some outright hilarious and some very sad and dark stories as well as board books, toys and wordless books. I was pleasantly surprised by the wide range of genres, from comic adventures to social issues and some mind-blowing fantasy such as Tommy Fry's surreal graphic novel about aliens disguised as pigeons. The variety of children's book forms was equally inspiring, from the loose and playful screen-printed pages by Chie Hosaka and the novelty story-making book by Alina Kasparyants to Duncan Annand's conceptual and thought-provoking three-dimensional posters. The MA Children’s Book Illustration graduation show never ceases to amaze me!
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| Josephine Birch |
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| Rachel Stubbs (Sebastian Walker Prize winner) |
