Illustration is hot right now. As an art form it has come into its own, with the work of illustrators becoming as collectible as that of fine artists.
Illustration is a people’s art. You don’t often look at an illustration and feel dim-witted and uncultured (or annoyed) because you ‘don’t get it’. This doesn’t mean illustration is in any way representative, necessarily, or literal or conventional. Not a bit. It just means that here you have pictures with a job to do. No room for self-indulgence; if the images are doing their job well you will make meaning from them. And while so doing, be delighted by the original, eloquent, often bizarre, often witty,
way an artist has expressed an idea or a mood, an event, the subject of an article or a simply a moment of whimsy.
We keep our much-loved picture books from childhood to hand down through the generations. We don’t forget those early experiences of rapt absorption in a world of colour, character, and surprise.
Illustration is all over the shop right now, all over town. Just look on walls. Some of the best public art is uncommissioned. Look in magazines, newspapers. Look on the web and on TV. Look at packaging, novelty items, cards, look at shop fit-outs; illustration is everywhere as well as in picture books. We live in an illustrated world. Ever since someone took to the walls of a cave with a piece of charcoal or a stick dipped in ochre, we have been telling each other our stories through pictures. And we’ll go on doing so.
Illustre is an illustration spectacular, starting on the 8th of November and running until the 27th of November at Chapel Off Chapel, Prahran. Opening night is Tuesday November 9th, 6-8pm.
