Happy Birthday to Fabula!

Today is a sort of birthday for us - Happy Birthday Fabula!

In September 2014 we formed our collective. After group discussion we decided on our name and two years ago today, we made ourselves public and joined Facebook! Since then we have been involved in nine shows and illustration events. Three have been solo exhibitions, one in the UK and two in China and we had a further overseas event when we took part in an illustration fair in Korea - thanks to our brilliant overseas members!

We're excited!

We've got twenty-one members now and we're currently planning our most exciting exhibition so far at Hove Museum (thanks to The Royal Pavilion & Museums) where we will be showing our work from December 3rd until April 2017. As well as showing work by sixteen individual members there will be collaborative work in progress inspired by myths and fairy tales called The Story Cabinet. 

Guest Artist

We are also pleased and excited to let you know that the very talented Joe Evans will be joining with us and showing his work as a guest artist. 

It's going to be an interesting exhibition including workshops planned over the course of the show for the public to take part in - details to follow. We do hope you will come.

The Story Cabinet Develops...

More about The Story Cabinet - our on-going collaborative piece based around fairy tales and myths...

Entering the Fairy Tale Forest

The art work from all nine artists involved will be combined in and around wooden boxes to make a rich visual display. 

An Old Wooden Drawer 

You may be able to imagine how these details might play a part in a fairy tale.

Whose Garden is This?

The project is still evolving and we are still meeting up to make work together using lots of natural materials.

Back into the Forest Using Mixed Media and Light

Textures

Several Fabula artists have joined together to work on this project. We work in many different disciplines and this creates a wide variety of potential ways to tell stories and collaborate with each other. Each of us responds to the project in a different way. 

Fairy Tale Trees - One Way to Make Them

Playing with Scale to Make These Trees.

There are details that we're deliberately leaving out here - so there will be some surprises. This piece will appeal to children and adults and will have some interactive elements. We hope you will come and see it at Hove Museum from 3rd December.

Fabula artists involved in the Story Cabinet are Richard Clarke, Lou Wishart, Penelope Chong, Louise Dennis, Katherine Perret, Juliette Rajak, Dagmara Rudkin, Mags Swift and Ruby Hermon.   Further information about our work can be found on the Fabula website.

'The Camp' at a London Film Festival and Hove Museum - don't miss it!

We are pleased to tell you that Madeleine Swift's film 'The Camp' has been chosen as part of the official selection for the the Factual Animated Film Fuss Festival - a film festival that celebrates animated documentary's. 

Madeleine's film is a very touching story about childhood, nostalgia, family love and keeping important memories alive. The story, written and narrated in text by Madeleine, is really brought to life through the way that she has used archival materials and music from the time to create her illustrations and animations. This film is really special because it has the capacity to connect with people emotionally and when it was played at her MA show there was not a dry eye in the house! 

Album covers from the eighties animated to music of the day to bring memories alive.

An illustration of the actual cassette player that Madeleine owned as a child.

We particularly like her animated drawings that, with music and narration, illustrate teenage love on a holiday camp so well. 

Stills from the animation - teenage memories at the disco.

Part of this artist's skill is her way with words and for this reason she is the best person to explain how she came to make this remarkable film: 

'When I was eight years old, and after a difficult year, my grandad bought a small holiday camp set above a beautiful cove in Devon. My parents went onto run the camp for 30 years and I adored it there. This special place became important to me in more ways than one: the camp being a holiday destination combined with it's magical setting made it the most exciting place a child could be, but more than that it contained people who gave the place its heart and soul. 

A still from The Camp

After the camp went into decline it finally closed it's gates for the last time in 2007. From that moment on I had a fear of losing the memories and an overwhelming need to record my feelings of the camp and was led to the MA in Sequential Design/Illustration at the University of Brighton where I did just that. 'The Camp' animation formed part of my final project, completed in 2015, and tells my story through animation, photography, illustration and original cine-film footage'. Madeleine Swift.

The festival is on in East London from 30th September-2nd October. 'The Camp' will be screened on Saturday 1st October as part of 'Onion Skins: Personal Stories' click here to purchase your ticket. 
If you are based in Brighton and Hove and unable to make the film festival you will have another chance to see this film at our forthcoming exhibition at Hove Museum from December 3rd 2016 - March 2017.

Fabula Collective  member Madeleine Swift is a writer and illustrator based in Brighton. She creates books and films around personal stories using writing, archive material, illustration and animation in order to communicate the emotion underneath. 

A still showing a mix of cine film and illustrations

Text and reproductions of actual signs from the holiday camp are used powerfully in the film.

A little girls memories of a holiday camp

Wild Animals in Children's Literature

Pip Carter has sent us these interesting illustrations for us to show you. This is recent work that she made to illustrate an article titled 'Bears, Bunnies and Black Beauty - the Role of Animals in Children's Literature' 

The first page shows a boy dressing up as a lion with his face painted.

The page is turned to reveal a real lion eating a zebra. This contrasts the child's imagined world with the gruesome reality of a real lion. A die cut hole allows both images to have the same face and visual mirroring links the two images.

Pip says she enjoyed drawing a scene of gore in her sweet children's book style.

The article explores the roles of animals in children's literature: at a young age animals are seen by the child as having human characteristics or behaviours (anthropomorphic) and at an older age children can read more about the naturalistic view of animals.

Pip's illustrations remind us of 'Where the Wild things Are" by Maurice Sendak. He used wild animals as a metaphor for the powerful feelings being expressed by his main character Max - another way that animals are used in children's literature. 

These illustrations from Pip have got us thinking more about the role of animals within children's literature - thanks Pip! To see more examples of Pip's work please go to the Fabula Collective website.

Pip was commissioned by The Ideas House on behalf of Capital Generation Partners.  The concept and art direction was by Fenton + Partners. The article and illustration will feature in Capital Generation Partners annual magazine ‘Summer Notes 2016’ issued for select clients.

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

The Story Cabinet Update

We thought we'd show you a bit more about The Story Cabinet because it's been a while since we did! 

Many of us are involved in this project but, typically, we don't want show you everything at once, so today we are going to focus only on the work of one Fabula artist. This is the work of Katherine Perret who is a photographer. 

Last time she was at Hove Museum Katherine used her time to try layering some of her images, using photography and drawing of trees representing a forest. 

Putting them in the window allowed the light to shine through the tracing paper to show up the layers. The idea for the Story Cabinet is that we will use lighting behind or in the cabinet to achieve a similar affect. 

As a photographer this project has pushed Katherine right out of her comfort zone and has forced her into experimenting using traditional photography and mixing it with other media, different papers and drawing. The idea is that Katherine's work will fit around some of the more character-based work in the group and add background and atmosphere to the project as a whole.

The Story Cabinet project is based around fairytales and myths but instead of basing her research around a specific fairytale, interestingly, Katie has decided to investigate them as a whole. She began to see the Forest as a character in itself as it is used in many fairytales/myths from around the world, ie. Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast, Rama and Sita, Baba Yaga even traditional stories like Robin Hood and Wind in the Willows.

She is interested in the differing aspects of this 'character'. The Enchanted Forest, the refuge or sanctuary verses the Deep Dark Wood that is full of evil spirits and things that want to get you.

   "Entering the Dark Forest is a threshold symbol: the soul entering the perils of the unknown; the realm of death; the secrets of nature, or the spiritual world which man must penetrate to find meaning." 

                      An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols, J C Cooper. 

Well, that's the update!  We hope that you will come down to Hove Museum to see for yourself what we are doing. The next time that Fabula will be at Hove Museum on residency (thanks to The Royal Pavilion & Museums) will be in September and we will post the date in advance here. See you soon!

Katherine Perret is is a photographer with a passion for the use of analogue film. Her work is often set in the garden or the wider landscape in which she finds herself. She has a BA in Photographic Art and an MA in Sequential design/Illustration from The University of Brighton where she became interested in book design. Her final MA piece was a photographic exploration of 'place' culminating in four hand bound books. Fundamentally her work is about the quiet act of looking and perceiving, observing the usually unobserved spaces. Capturing the light of this space on the negative and weaving these images together to form narratives. 

To see more of Katherine's work please go to www.fabulacollective.com