Sir Quentin Blake’s two-decade long dream to create the UK’s first permanent space for illustration is finally a reality.
In 2002 the illustrator, 93, best known for collaborating with Roald Dahl, founded the House of Illustration, which has now moved into a former waterworks in Clerkenwell, central London.
Opening on Friday, the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration includes three exhibition spaces, a cafe, shop, gardens and free spaces including a library with more than 1,800 books, and creative studio.
One of the exhibition spaces will be dedicated to his work, the first selection titled Performance. It will showcase theatrical influences and feature more than 100 original and rarely seen drawings.
Highlights include a caricature of Laurence Olivier in The Entertainer, drawn to accompany a theatre review in 1957, and pieces he created for a Folio Society edition of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.
The exhibition also features illustrations and preliminary drawings for The Enormous Crocodile, which was published in 1978 – the first Dahl book he illustrated.
Ahead of the opening, centre director Lindsey Glen told The Press Association: “In 2002 Quentin Blake first had the idea of a national centre for illustration.
“He could see that illustration was something that’s in all our lives and has been throughout time, but really has been very much overlooked in public art spaces.
“So he set about doing something about that, a place with illustration above the door, and finally, almost 25 years later, that dream is becoming a reality.”
After “outgrowing” a previous space in Kings Cross, Glen said it was clear there was a “huge appetite” for this work.
After the space sat derelict for decades, it has now been transformed – with London’s oldest surviving windmill to be used as a space for residency programmes.
Speaking about the importance of showcasing illustration, Glen said it had “been used throughout time to share stories and ideas, to try and persuade us, to instruct us”.
“It’s absolutely a fundamental part of human communication, and yet really, there’s been no place, no one place, where you could come to explore it, and now today there is,” she said.
Sir Quentin had his first illustration published in Punch magazine in 1949 when he was still at school and he has worked on more than 500 books.
With an almost 80-year career and more than 50,000 pieces in his archives, the centre’s artistic director Olivia Ahmad had a huge task deciding what to pick for the first exhibition.
Explaining how they settled on Performance, she said the illustrator often compared his work to that of a theatre director.
“Quentin is an illustrator and draws pictures and uses ink and paper but needs to cast the characters, or in his case draw them, design the costumes, sets and then decide what the actions are going to be.
“Thinking about performance is really fundamental to the way Quentin thinks about his work,” she told PA.
“But performers also find their way into his work very often – there’s a lot of harlequins and acrobats and clowns. We saw that in his work from the 1950s to now, so we thought that would be a great way to look at many different things from his archives.”
She also said visitors would not only be able to see works they “know and love”, but other pieces that even Sir Quentin “hasn’t seen for a long time”.
After working with the illustrator for over a decade now, Ahmad said drawing was “like breathing for him”.
Asked about what has seen him become such a beloved figure over decades, she said: “He’s just great at telling a story and has a very fluid, gestural, kind of drawing line. The lines aren’t joined up, and the colours fly out of the line too, which gives his work great movement and makes you excited to turn the pages of his books.”
The opening of the centre will also include illustrator Murugiah’s first solo show.
Titled Ever Feel Like, the artist’s works draw upon his Sri Lankan heritage and Welsh upbringing, in which he reflects on his identity and makes references to Hollywood film and Sri Lankan motifs.
The other exhibition, Queer as Comics, marks the first major exhibition on queer comic-making in the UK, spanning the 1940s to the present day.
Glen said she wanted everyone to leave the centre “looking differently at the world around them”.
“We want them to notice the illustrations that are part of our everyday lives, and to think about the communication that’s within those, those pictures, to think about the way that illustration persuades us and tells us stories.
“We also want everyone to leave knowing that they too can be an illustrator that with a few simple tools, whether that is some torn up pieces of paper used as a collage, whether that is pencil and pen, whether that’s through digital media, that they too can tell their own story as an illustrator.”
Last week Sir Quentin, who continues to draw every day, visited the centre.
Glen said: “He has been the most incredible, tireless, and generous champion of illustration, and utterly committed to making this project happen, and he is thrilled.”
