The day after the launch of the Giles exhibition at the London Cartoon Museum (see previous post), another one was launched at Ipswich (on Friday 7 November).
This one, called ‘Giles: Drawn To Suffolk’, concentrated more on the Giles connection with Suffolk, as he lived near Ipswich and had a studio in the town.
Material on display included cartoon artwork which had local features and backgrounds, menus and programmes covers drawn for local organisations, and there was also a mock-up of his studio (as there was at the Cartoon Museum).
The main difference between the two exhibitions was the space being used. The Cartoon Museum is ‘cosy’ and the Giles exhibition there is being shown on boards which guide you through the displays. The Ipswich exhibition is being held in a large gallery with a high ceiling, so the items on view are on the four walls and there is a large floor space in the middle for further displays – such as policemens helmets.
November 6th was the night of the “Giles – One of the family” exhibition private viewing which followed on from the successful opening of the exhibition and launch of the website (http://www.cartoons.ac.uk) the day previously.
As well as Artwork on display, there were memorabilia, fan letters, a looping video reel, a recreation of Giles’ studio and also a British Cartoon Archive kiosk allowing access to the website and the digitised images.
People using the BCA kiosk
The evening was a large success and plenty of well known faces were all present to sample and enjoy a selection of Carl Giles’ long hidden (and some previously unseen) original artwork on display.
The exhibition is currently open and will be running until February 2009. More details of which can be found on the main website.
The imminent launch of two exhibitions on Giles and a website has meant that the British Cartoon Archive (BCA) has been in the news.
Newspaper articles on the archive have appeared recently in The Guardian, The Independent and The Daily Express. More publicity is expected in the next few days so BCA Head Nick Hiley is a busy little bee at the moment. While helping to get the London exhibition set up at the Cartoon Museum he is also fending off calls from journalists wanting more information, so I have an image of him with mobile phone in one hand and trying to hang Giles artwork with the other.
No doubt he will tell us all about it in a later blog.
This is a busy week for the British Cartoon Archive as it prepares for the launch of two Giles exhibitions, and a new website. Phew.
The first exhibition ‘Giles: One Of The Family’ is on view at the Cartoon Museum, Little Russell Street, London, from Wednesday 5 November 2008 to 15 February 2009, and includes material from the British Cartoon Archive. This features over 80 works such as colour artwork as well as drawings never reproduced in the Giles annuals. His studio is recreated complete with desk, drawing board, reference material, and many of the toys given to him, some made by fans. Also revealed are less familiar aspects of his career, including his time as an animator, his propaganda work for the Ministry of Information during the Second World War, and his work as a cartooning war correspondent for the Express.
The second exhibition takes place in Ipswich, where Giles had a studio. ‘Giles: Drawn To Suffolk’ focuses on area that Giles called home and shows works illustrating Ipswich places and people. This exhibition also has studio items including a collection of police helmets (illustrated in one of the cartoons) and photographs. The exhibition, which is being held at the Ipswich Town Hall Galleries, starts on Saturday 8 November 2008 and runs until 17 January 2009.
A catalogue of the Cartoon Museum exhibition will be available at the London and Ipswich venues.
The British Cartoon Archive website is getting a facelift and relaunches on Wednesday 5 November, so keep an eye on the site for developments.
When cataloguing a collection, archivists will use a pencil to write reference numbers on documents, and it’s not just any old pencil (although in my case it is – I’ll explain later). And if you ever find yourself in the research room of an archive looking at original material you should be using a pencil to make notes. Why?
The idea is that pencil will not harm the document being written on. It can also be erased. And if you are handling a pencil when looking at documents for research purposes, you won’t cause any damage if you accidentally catch the document with your pencil. This is why holders of archive material insist on rules and regulations when researchers are studying originals. For a lesson in how not to handle material have a look at this Mr Bean sketch, where he visits a local studies library and has a few problems:
The preferred weapon of choice for archivists is the 2B pencil, which is softer than other grades. And in my case I’m using a 2B which was destined to be used by Giles. His collection held here at the British Cartoon Archive includes items from his Ipswich studio such as easels, pens and pencils, inks, and gadgets such as electrically powered pencil sharpeners. Because there are duplicate items a lot of material is used to mock-up a studio for exhibitions and displays.
There are many packs of pencils so I thought it would be a nice touch to use the spare 2Bs to write reference numbers on documents and the boxes they are stored in. A lot of archivists will think this is sacrilege, but I think Giles would have appreciated the gesture, especially as it was his wish that his collection be kept together and made available for research via a catalogue. He used pencils to create the artwork in the collection, so why not use the same tools to create a catalogue?
John Major’s underpants. Brown as Stalin. Obama as Osama. These images, as much as anything, show how a politician’s career can be made, or broken, on the back of public perception. With the US elections almost upon us, there is unprecedented opportunity for the art of satire to shape public opinion.
Kevin ‘KAL’ Kallaugher (celebrating 30 years as The Economist’s political cartoonist) and Henry Naylor (creator of TV’s ‘Headcases’ and ‘Spitting Image’ head writer) will discuss cartooning, campaigning and chicanery and explore how art can be used to interest, excite and intrigue any audience.
Politics will never look the same again.
The evening will start with a 45-minute discussion on political cartooning, including time for audience questions. This will be followed by a hands-on, interactive cartooning session conducted by KAL, where members of the audience will see first hand the process of political cartooning.
This discussion will be chaired by Krishnan Guru-Murthy (Channel 4 News)
Date: Thursday 2nd October Time: 7-8.15pm (Event will start promptly – please arrive 30 minutes early for registration) Venue: Congress Centre,
28 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3LS (nearest tube Tottenham Court Road) MAP LINK >>
On 17 April 2008, courtesy of Naomi Boneham and Frank Bowles, two members of BCAD paid a visit to the Freeze Frame project at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge. The Freeze Frame project is digitising over 20,000 photographic negatives and related documentary resources, covering the period from 1845 to 1960, to add to the thousands of polar images already digitised.
Part of the archive display
Nick Hiley and Anthony Seminara visited the Institute, got a taste of the huge polar archive it holds, saw the processing of negatives, and talked to staff members – including the recently-appointed education outreach officer. The glass negatives in the BCAD project are being handled by a specialist digitisation company, and naturally do not contain as much white space as the polar negatives, but it was interesting to see how another project approached the same problems of image creation, storage, metadata, and future access.
One of the requirements of the BCAD project is to ensure that the new website comes with a good set of consistent, stable Uniform Resource Identifers (URIs). Continue Reading »
One of our tasks during the course of this project is to trace people who wrote letters to Giles. We’re doing this because copyright clearance will be needed before such material can be digitised and displayed on our website. This is going to be a long process in some cases because someone may have written a letter to Giles in 1955, and we have no idea if that person is still alive or at the same address. We may have to find relatives or others who are now the copyright (or IPR) owners of the material.
Some correspondents who were in the public eye or well known will be easier to find and one example is the cartoonist Brian Adcock. He wrote to Giles (using the name Brian Odcack – which didn’t help when trying to find him) asking for advice and included with his letter one of his drawings. His letter is typical of the sort received from people wanting tips on how to become a cartoonist and Giles received so many that he had standard reply letters for the different types of enquiry (to be covered in a future blog post). The template letter in this case was known as ‘My boy draws’.
We don’t know if Giles used this stock letter for his reply but there is a note on Brian’s letter which says ‘Monkey auto card sent with letter’. Brian has given us permission to digitise his drawing and he said this when we got in touch:
“Wow, I haven’t seen that for a long time! Yes it was I who was responsible for that cartoon and letter and of course you can use them in any way you like. Giles was a big inspiration to me and was kind enough to reply to my letter. He sent a picture of one if his famous characters and signed it. He also sent a note saying something along the lines of ‘cartooning takes lots of hard work and endless research!’ I am now the editorial cartoonist for the Scotland on Sunday and his words proved correct!”
I was lucky enough recently to have a tour of the Archives & Special Collections Centre at the University of the Arts, London, and was struck by the similarities between the Stanley Kubrick collection held there and the Carl Giles material at the British Cartoon Archive. The film maker, like Giles, worked in his own premises, and as a result both men compiled their own reference files, cuttings, photo library and other items to use when creating their work.
The Kubrick collection also had film, video, objects, props, and costumes – including a knife and grenade used in Full Metal Jacket. Giles also kept some military items from his time as a correspondent during the Second World War.
The research area and strongrooms were impressive and are based on the designs used for 2001: A Space Odyssey. The strongrooms have electronically operated mobile shelving and are environmentally controlled to achieve the right relative humidity and temperature requirements for BS5454: 2000 Recommendations for the storage and exhibition of archival documents. You imagine HAL 9000 behind the scenes making sure that everything is working properly (‘You don’t want to move that shelving, Dave’).
