Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton 28th May – 25th June 2011

Jake and Dinos Chapman:
My Giant Colouring Book
A Hayward Touring Exhibition






The Gallery occupies the whole of Elmfield House in Honiton, an attractive Grade II late Georgian town house, formerly the home and studio of the artist Thelma Hulbert. 


 A new Hayward Touring exhibition of etchings by Jake and Dinos Chapman will come to the Thelma Hulbert Gallery from Saturday 28 May – Saturday 25 June. The Chapman brothers first came to prominence as part of the YBA (young British artists) movement of the 1990s. They featured in the Royal Academy’s seminal 1997 exhibition ‘Sensation’, showing a sculptural version of Goya’s disasters of war. They returned to Goya’s work in 2003 when they caused outrage for painting their own ghoulish imagery over an original set of etchings.  


My Giant Colouring Book returns to this method of working, this time appropriating join-the-dot drawings from a children’s picture book. The naïve innocence of the illustrations triggers a wild outpouring of fantastical imagery far removed from the original dot formations. This series of 21 etchings, published by The Paragon Press, London in 2004, offers a fascinating introduction to the imaginations of two of Britain’s most inventive and subversive artists. 


Many of the Chapmans’ favourite themes are found here, often with a dark undercurrent. Monstrous creatures and hallucinatory scenes emerge, bristling with grotesque humour, and rich in allusions to art history: from medieval images of hell and damnation to Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. The subjects include sabre-toothed owls, psychedelic grinning cats and bears trapped in the belly of the Loch Ness monster. In describing the series, Dinos Chapman commented, “(They) are about how wrong you could make an image”.  
For over 40 years, the Hayward Gallery has a played a key role in creating imaginative, high profile exhibitions in London and, through Hayward Touring Exhibitions, within the UK. Both Hayward Touring and the Arts Council Collection are managed by the Hayward Gallery on behalf of Arts Council England, and add to the Hayward’s distinctive national remit.

The Hayward Gallery is a constituent part of Southbank Centre, the UK’s largest arts centre, occupying a 21-acre site that sits in the midst of London’s most vibrant cultural quarter on the South Bank of the Thames. The site has an extraordinary creative and architectural history stretching back to the 1951 Festival of Britain. Southbank Centre is home to the Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and the Hayward Gallery as well as The Saison Poetry Library and the Arts Council Collection. Each year the Hayward Gallery presents up to five major art exhibitions as well as Hayward Touring exhibitions in more than 100 venues around the country.


Address:  
     
Thelma Hulbert Gallery
Elmfield House
Dowell Street
Honiton
East Devon
EX14 1LX


Telephone:            01404 45006   
Email:                    info@thelmahulbert.com
Opening hours:    Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 5pm           
Admission:           FREE
My Giant Colouring Book, 2004. Copyright Jake and Dinos Chapman and The Paragon Press, London











Comments received from the public on Friday evening included;

"Exhibitions of this quality put Honiton on the map."
from new leader of East Devon District Council, Paul Diviani.


 "Good to see YBA's [Young British Artists] in Devon!!"from conceptual artist Gary Dickens, Taunton 


"We loved this show, we're off to buy our own colouring book and start attacking it!!"
From The Madden Family, Gittisham


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