Flights of Imagination: the Migrations exhibition
In an article for Books for Keeps in September 2017, Pam Dix described a special exhibition launched by the team at the International Centre for the Picture Book in Society at Worcester University. Illustrators were asked to contribute a postcard with an image of a bird and a message for refugees on the back and she recorded that over 300 arrived from all over the world.
The Migrations exhibition was an ambitious project from the outset but it has achieved a reach and impact far greater than ever anticipated. A beautiful book of the exhibition has just been published by Otter-Barry Books and is a fitting testimony to this ambition and the quality of the project. Pam Dix interviewed Piet Grobler and Tobias Hickey from Worcester University last month to find out how their ideas took flight.
The genesis of the Migrations project was an offer to the Worcester Illustration team to curate an exhibition in the Bibiana Children’s Art House, Bratislava, to coincide with the 2017 Biennale. In 2015, the tragic image of the refugee Syrian child Alan Kurdi, dead on a Mediterranean beach at three years old, was in everyone’s mind and led the team to discuss ideas of displacement, crossing borders and refugees. From this, as one, they came to the idea of using the metaphor of birds, flight and migration. An open call was sent to children’s illustrators around the world via networks, social media and personal contacts, asking for an image of a bird and a message to be sent on a postcard to become part of an exhibition. A very early response from Shaun Tan gave Piet and Tobias confidence in the project and their ideas and gave the exhibition, and subsequently the book, an endorsement and an authenticity.
The postcard is a contained and yet universally known format and one that is often used by art students and colleges. The concept fits particularly well with the theme of migration. Postcards, as objects, cross borders; they are fragile; they are processed and stamped. Political elements in countries where there is distrust of the postal system meant that some postcards were packaged for sending. Some of the contributing artists used envelopes to avoid any risk of detention or damage, though where that happened the envelope
and stamps/franking have been retained as part of the exhibition and the book. As objects, postcards are not without challenges, for an exhibition and for a book, but in both cases each postcard has been showcased as an artefact, giving an authenticity to its message and its journey.
Each postcard has been on a journey and it is wonderful to imagine them flying to Worcester from around the world. The first postcard received was from the Norwegian artist, Stian Hole, and its illustration and message of beauty in migration and of hope, was used for the exhibition poster:
It’s that dream that we carry with us that something wonderful will happen… An extract from Det er den Draumen by Olav H Hauge, translated by Robert Bly
That early arrival from Shaun Tan (his postcard incorporates stamps as part of his illustration) has a similar message:
Where there is change there is hope.
Where there is hope there is life.
14 Books for Keeps No.236 May 2019
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