Fabula at Hove Museum - Our Opening Weekend!

Last Friday was our Private View at Hove Museum. It was a lovely event and we were very pleased and excited to welcome lots of people to help us celebrate the start of the show. 

Looking into our cabinet of development work containing sketch books, maquettes and materials. 

The exhibition is looking spectacular and we couldn't be more happy with it. We'd like to extend a big thank you to The Royal Pavilion & Museums for hosting both the private view and our very beautiful show that was expertly curated by Julia Basnett.

Our curator Julia Basnett (left) accepting flowers given to her from Fabula Collective to say a big thank you for all her hard work. 

It all feels very Christmassy... here's a sneak preview for those of you who weren't there on Friday:

Captivating puppets and images from the story of Henny Penny by Dagmara Rudkin. This display is illuminated with lighting throughout and adds to seasonal feeling of the whole exhibition. 

Our guests admiring the exquisite film models and automaton by Richard Clarke. Don't forget to see the Fabula Film Reel  - five films showing upstairs in the museum.

We were also able to be part of the Open House event on the first weekend of the exhibition.

A selection of prints, paintings, cards and small gifts from Fabula were on sale and are now available to buy throughout the exhibition at the museum shop. 

We are particularly proud of the diversity in this exhibition - there will be something for everyone. We can't really do it justice here but we will try to give you some idea of what you can expect. There are hand made books retelling fairy tales, five short films (upstairs), stories told quickly through drawings done in one minute, a variety of children's books, three-dimensional work including The Story Cabinet, photography, poetry, narrative textiles and work inspired directly by our residency at Hove Museum.

The Camp by Madeleine Swift is in the book corner along with many other Fabula books. You can also see Madeleine's touching film about childhood memories of a holiday camp. 

Lively prints and a book in progress from Clara Wei Fu. It depicts a lovely story for children about an important relationship that helps the child to find their internal peaceful or happy place so they can cope with everyday life.

An illustrated introduction to Mozart's The Magic Flute by Jo Lawes. Colourful and appealing work made to introduce opera to a reluctant audience. 

This is The Story Cabinet - our collaborative piece. Some of the work in the exhibition, including the Story Cabinet,  is interactive because there are torches for you to use to peep in and get a better look at all the details. See how many fairy tales you can spot. Why not add another to our suggestion box and for children there are colouring and quiz sheets with sticker prizes to make their visit more memorable.

Peeping through the round window in The Story Cabinet. Three cabinets bursting with fairy tales!

Fabula Collective hope you will be able to come to see the exhibition which is on until 9th May at Hove Museum. 

Further information about the workshops that we are running alongside the show can been seen in the previous blogpost on this blog or at Hove Museum where you can book your place. 

What's The Story? - part 2

Do you remember a post called What's the Story Part 1 about some art work made by Dagmara Rudkin giving clues to a fairy tale that we wanted you to guess?  Well, this is the post that will give you the answer (but not straight away)! First we will elaborate on some previous clues and then show some more images by Dagmara before we reveal all.

Remember this? This was the last visual clue on the previous 'What's The Story' post. Dagmara said this was a bit obscure and last time when we were wondering what it meant we said:

 " What's the significance of the hands? - hands with leaf textures that look like veins or wrinkles? Perhaps a connection to nature, time or age is important? Numbers are often significant in fairy tales - are there any significant numbers here?"

Well here's a further clue: Numbers are important in this fairy tale but not the number that might come to mind from looking at this hand. Now that we know the answer we'd say that these hands, amongst other things, are saying something about work.

If you look at the previous What's The Story post you will see feathers and wings drawn to illustrate this fairy tale. So we thought you'd like to see some more of Dagmara's drawings that were made at Hove Museum in response to their temporary exhibition "Birds of a Feather". The colourful collages were inspired by the beautiful drawings of exotic birds also exhibited there.  There is still a chance to see the 'Birds of a Feather' exhibition until 15th November.

Dagmara drawing birds at Hove Museum

The answer to What's the Story coming soon....!

We hope you enjoyed that visual interlude!  The important clues were the nettles (the number of leaves printed and nettles as part of the hand ), wings from swans, clothing or characters that had wings or feathers. 

The answer to What's the Story is ...'The Six Swans' by the Brothers Grimm.

Follow the link above to find out more about the tale and you'll be able to see how the clues relate to the story.

Fabula Collective are in residence at Hove Museum. The next time that you can come and see what we are doing at the museum is Monday 26th September. We look forward to meeting you soon.

A new children's book by Juliette Rajak

Juliette Rajak showing the work in progress on her picture book 

Fabula member Juliette Rajak took almost two years out from studying for her masters degree to go to Australia. But she didn't take any time out from illustration - while she was there she won the Wilson Vineyard Wine Label Design Commission and was shortlisted for the Five Mile Press Illustration Prize as well as having several exhibitions of her work.

It's great to have her back in Brighton again now and although she is currently completing her MA in Sequential Design/Illustration at The University of Brighton she still found time to  come to Hove Museum to be involved in our residency there. Here she is showing work from her MA project to members of the public at Hove Museum.

Juliette's MA project has culminated in a children's picture book about the importance of 'slowing down'  - letting children experience boredom so that they can start to use their imaginations.  The story she has written and illustrated follows the imagination of a child playing with a puddle of milk on the table while her mother is busy with the housework.  The child starts to imagine herself in the miniature world of germs and so begins her adventure! It is illustrated using textures that originate from print making techniques and Juliette got inspiration from maps to develop the beautiful colour scheme.  As well as tackling the subject of 'slowing down' it gives lots of scientific information about germs.

Here are some images from the development of her book.

Juliette's book will be on show at the MA degree show at The University Gallery, Grand Parade, The University of Brighton. The show is on from 16th September (private view in the evening) until 23rd September.

It is likely that she will also exhibit images from the book at our forthcoming exhibition at Hove Museum in December and so that will be another chance to see them.

You can also see more of Juliette's work at  www.fabulacollective.com

Drawings Inspired by a Tiny Train at Hove Museum

In the Toy Trek game upstairs in the Wizard's Attic at Hove Museum, there is a tinplate steam train in a glass cabinet commemorating the coming of the railways to Brighton in 1841. It is dwarfed by playing cards and framed by an oval window in the display about a metre off the ground. It is easily overlooked and it tells of a time when Brighton was opening up to the world. 

During residency at Hove Museum, Fabula member Penelope Chong has spent many hours drawing this tiny object literally from the different viewpoints of an adult, a child and a toddler. 

The act of drawing is an act of scrutiny and this close examination has helped her to reflect on the different lives of objects. As a toy this was made to be played with: Stories of the passengers - the driver and the stoker  too - could be imagined as they were glimpsed through the carriage windows. It bears the fingerprints of ‘giants’ - the children that played with it. Now it sits behind glass as a museum piece, telling a different story.

The toy casts a dramatic shadow that Penelope has incorporated into her drawings. She says she was straining to see the detail in the train because of the size of it and the lighting conditions. This was a reminder to her of the passing of time and that her sight is deteriorating as she gets older. An interest in shadows and scars: ephemeral versus permanent is a recurring theme in Penelope’s own work and perhaps that is why this small toy train held her interest and why she dealt with it in this particular way. 

We thought you would find it interesting to see Penelope's sensitive drawings and to hear some of the thoughts bought about by the process of drawing a small toy train.  Next time you're at Hove Museum why not have a close look in The Wizard's Attic and see if you can see the little train? Maybe you'll see it a different way and bring your own story to it.

Penelope is a Brighton-based artist who is just as likely to pick up a scalpel or needle as a pencil or paintbrush, and enjoys working in a range of media and on a variety of surfaces, including live plants. She studied Fine Art Printmaking at Brighton University gaining a First Class Hons degree and she is midway through the MA in Sequential Design/Illustration. See more of Penelope's work at www.fabulacollective.com

Artists from Fabula will be in residency again at Hove Museum on Monday 29th August - do come down and see what we are doing. 

What's the story? - part 1

We thought it would be fun to have a bit of a guessing game in this post that will be ongoing and always called: 

'What's the Story?'

The images below are clues to a story that will be part of The Story Cabinet - remember our previous post where we told you a little bit about that?  Fabula artist Dagmara Rudkin has made these beautiful prints, collages and drawings at Hove Museum, where we are currently artists in residence. We hope you like them as much as we do. But what story do they tell? Can you guess? 

Dagmara hasn't told us what she has in mind because that would spoil the guessing game. You may remember from our previous post about The Story Cabinet that it will refer to a fairy tale or myth. 

The above image shows a very decorative print and Dagmara has told us that it was made from nettle leaves. Could nettles themselves be a clue to the story? 

This image is part collage and part drawing. It has a wing but also resembles a human and Dagmara appears to be developing a character. As inspiration for this piece she has been drawing and photographing dolls from the museum's permanent collection.  These can be found in a room called The Wizard's Attic, upstairs at Hove Museum. This contains a fantastic collection of toys and childhood memorabilia.  We're spending a lot of time there - it's well worth a visit.

So - what stories, myths or fairy tales, do you know that feature wings or feathers? What kind of wings are these? Thinking about the dolls and the leaves, we're wondering if scale is an important clue? Perhaps the leaves could represent trees? 

Here's the last clue for this post (but there will be more to come in future posts about this story and others).  We're going to tell you, in case it helps, that when Dagmara sent this one she said it was 'a bit more obscure'. 

What's the significance of the hands? - hands with leaf textures that look like veins or wrinkles? Perhaps a connection to nature, time, or age is important? Numbers are often significant in fairy tales - are there any significant numbers here? 

We've got some ideas now but, as we said - we don't know for sure what the story is - so we might be sending you in the wrong direction!

We're looking forward to the next clue from Dagmara and we'll post it here soon.

Dagmara Rudkin is a Brighton-based visual artist whose practice crosses the boundaries of fine art, design and craft.  For more information about her work please go to the Fabula website www.fabulacollective.com

If you'd like to see for yourself what we are doing and how we work - do come down and see us during our residency at Hove Museum. 

The next time we will be there is Monday 1st August. 

We are easy to spot because we are all wearing black T shirts with white question marks on and we'll be very happy to talk with you and show you our work.

If you'd like to read Hove Museum's post about our residency in their 'News From The Museum' - you can do so via this link: http://brightonmuseums.org.uk/discover/tag/fabula-collective/

Hove Museum - a place that inspires us to make art and stories...

...an ideal opportunity for Fabula!

In case you didn't see our first post - thanks to The Royal Pavilion & Museums this is where we are having our residency and producing work towards a family friendly exhibition and events to be held at the museum in December - we will be posting regularly about it all here.

Next Monday 18th July we will be at the museum again - we are a very friendly bunch and we'd love for you to come and talk to us and see what we are doing.

Here is a taster of what happened last time Fabula artists met to 'make' together at the Museum. 

This is Richard Clarke's work - these are explorations of ideas for a landscape towards a collaborative piece we are all working on. Richard Clarke is a multi-award winning Filmmaker and Designer. His works are considered to be a humorous and magical exploration of the human psyche. 

Here you can see the materials that Dagmara Rudkin has bought to the museum to work from. Dagmara's usual practice crosses the boundaries of Fine Art, Design and Craft. In her recently completed MA she used animations, paintings, illustrations and puppetry performance to tell a cautionary tale for children.

 

Katie Perret is working out some ideas here.  Katie is a photographer who uses analogue photography and her work is concerned with the quiet act of looking and perceiving.

Each artist uses their preferred working method - drawing, writing, photographs, prints or constructing maquettes to build upon their ideas towards finished pieces. 

Here you can see that we are using photographs that we have taken of artefacts from the museum's permanent collection to work from for inspiration. Louise Wishart is using her sketch book to develop her ideas. Lou uses a mixture of watercolour and dyes alongside hand printed tissue papers that she makes herself. She then scans them and manipulates them in Photoshop. Lou's work is concerned with capturing the interesting, everyday, quirky bits of ordinary life.  She is planning to illustrate the museums permanent collection in a short book to be exhibited in the December exhibition - we're looking forward to seeing that!

Dagmara uses delicate tissue paper here in her working process.

If you'd like more information about Fabula artists (we are a big group!) please go to  www.fabulacollective.com

It's very special to have the support of the local museums because, although we have many overseas members, we are a Brighton-based art collective, formed here in 2014. Having the time and space to work at Hove Museum, surrounded by so much to capture our imaginations is very timely for us as a collective.

We're excited by the chance to connect with the local public through the residency so do come and see us next Monday 18th July -  or on on selected Mondays (check this blog)  until December.

Fabula in Residency!

Here's some great news! - thanks to The Royal Pavilion & Museums we are having a Residency at Hove Museum and we started this week!

We will now be at Hove Museum on a regular basis in preparation for an exhibition at the museum in December. Fabula artists Dagmara Rudkin, Juliette Rajak and Katie Perret got stuck in straight away finding inspiration from the museum's collection of toys.

We are very excited to have this fantastic opportunity. On certain Mondays, up until the start of the exhibition in December, we will be creating work for the show - working on a collaborative project as well as our own individual work.  We'll let you know when we'll be there as we go along and we hope you'll come down and see what we're up to. We'll also tell you more about the residency and the forthcoming exhibition here over the next few months.  All we can say for now is  - there will be lots of variety, it will be story-based, we will be producing work influenced by the museum's collection and there will be something for the whole family to enjoy.