September 10th 2009

Monday, September 14th, 2009

Retrospective Exhibition: 

‘Drawings that Move – The Art of Joanna Quinn’

National Media Museum, Bradford, England

16 October 2009 – February 28th 2010.

At long last Joanna is having a major exhibition called ‘Drawings that Move – The Art of Joanna Quinn’ selected from all the art and graphic work of the films we’ve produced over the last 25 years. For the last 3 months we’ve been working flat out in conjunction with curator Michael Harvey and his team at the National Media Museum, Bradford, England, to compile what we think is going to be a very dynamic and enlightening show.

 The show will be an incredibly detailed and extensive view, not only of the artwork itself but of the processes involved in the production of an animated film from initial scripts, storyboards, character designs etc. through to completely finished films.

 The show will also trace Joanna’s development from her early days as a Graphic Design student at Southgate college and Middlesex University through to the foundation of our company Beryl Productions. It will also show the events and artists that have had a major influence on the evolution of Joanna’s particularly distinctive drawing style and animation technique. On show with Joanna’s own artwork will be a selection of other artwork showing these influences. We’ve been incredibly lucky in obtaining some original artwork from major artists such as Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Goya and illustrators like Gilray as well as more contemporary socio-political illustrators like Posy Simmonds and Steve Bell of the Guardian.

 The exhibition will feature interactive visual displays consisting of interviews with Joanna, a video diary of the build up to the show and various public workshops, which will take place around the show. Among the display of artwork will be sections selected from the range of the personal commissioned films to TV commercials produced over the last 20 years for Whiskas catfood, United Airlines and of course Charmin toilet paper.

 As the title of the show suggests, the central theme of the show is Drawing and, of course this has been Joanna’s main preoccupation and obsession throughout most of her creative life. Even in the Digital age and particularly in animation with the dominance of CGI, the Games culture etc., we still both feel very passionately that drawing should have a central and significant place, not necessarily as an end in itself but as a thinking tool in the development and evolution of creative ideas. Drawing or Mark Making has ceased to occupy a significant place on many Art and Design courses in Britain. We deplore this downgrading of the medium. We think it’s created a vacuum in many students’ ability to communicate clearly and to explore ideas progressively and dynamically. We hope that Joanna’s show might be inspirational in pointing to drawing as still being a fundamental language of development and expression.

 We’ve selected from over 50,000 of Joanna’s drawings and graphic works and it’s been a gruelling experience, but we think that we’ve got the overall balance right.

 You’ll also be able to buy a selection of artefacts – flickbooks, DVD’s postcards, posters at the exhibition and later on through the website.

We hope many people will get to see it at Bradford or later when it tours

See you there?

Les

National Media Museum blog: joanna quinn