Curated by Art Ludique – Le Musée, Paris, and PAFF! International Museum of Comic Art, Pordenone 12 May – 24 September 2023
From 12 May to 24 September 2023, PAFF! International Museum of Comic Art will be home to Wallace and Gromit, the adventurous animals of Mossy Bottom Farm from Shaun the Sheep, our feathered friends from Chicken Run, and the swashbuckling crew of The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! They all feature in The Art of Aardman Exhibition, Shaun the Sheep & Friends curated by the Museum together with Art Ludique – Le Musée (Paris), in collaboration with the creators behind these incredible characters, Aardman Studios (Bristol).
Having toured Paris, Frankfurt, Melbourne and Seoul, the exhibition arrives in Pordenone enriched by precious unpublished works and with a new exhibition layout. Visitors will be taken on a journey through some 30 authentic film sets – true masterpieces of sculpture from the creative world of Peter Lord and David Sproxton, the two masterminds behind Aardman Studios. Aardman has taken to the stage of the Oscars some four times, including nominations and Academy Awards.
“In just 5 years, PAFF! has become an international hub for comics. What makes it unique is how it uses comics as a cultural hook and draws on other disciplines to create something exceptional,” says Giulio De Vita, Artistic Director at PAFF!. “The Art of Aardman Exhibition, Shaun the Sheep & Friends represents the culmination of this journey, as we broaden our gaze beyond comics to animation, alongside one of the world’s most famous and well-loved production companies,” he concluded.
The exhibition traces Peter and David’s story from 1966, when, at the age of 12, they created their first animated sketch for fun, which they would go on to sell to the BBC for £15, through to some of their most iconic stop-motion films. The journey covers the full filmmaking process in a tribute to the artistic genius of the creators. Image by image, they have brought to life clay sculptures that continue to enchant millions of people of all ages around the world.
As Pordenone takes the baton, the collection is expanding to include some incredible new content on display for the very first time, such as the Oscar®- and BAFTA®-nominated short Christmas musical Robin Robin (2021), of which it will be possible to see some drawings and the original puppet. In addition, it will be possible to see a national preview of the brand new CGI series from the Lloyd of the Flies studio (2022) and the BAFTA® nominated stop motion show for children The Very Small Creatures (2021), never distributed in Italy.
Peter Lord, director, animator, film producer and co-founder of Aardman, affirms that: “In this exhibition, we want you to pause along the way to share some of our experience and meet some of the people whose creativity has made the journey possible. Because the drawings, designs, puppets and models you’ll see here are beautiful things in their own right.” He added: “Personally I love model animation. I love the fact that for me it is as instinctive as moving myself. And I go further and say that stop motion animation is really just a form of live performance. It’s the most thrilling and absorbing activity. As you will see in this exhibition, it brings with it a great blessing, in a magical world of beautiful objects, surrounded by amazing art created and illuminated by the best artists.”
From the first sketchbook drawings of the characters to experimentations with different nuances for the figures and sets, and from the writing process combining narration and form, to sculpting the characters and building the sets, the exhibition reconstructs the Aardman Studios’ rigorous creative process, all in an original setup produced by the museum.
Visitors will find on display Wallace’s cracking contraptions, Gromit’s vegetable patch, sets from the film Shaun the Sheep, the flying machine from Chicken Run, the fabulous 5-metre galleon from Pirates, as well as more than 400 drawings, character studies and set studies, watercolour paintings and storyboards – plus Nick Park’s student sketchbook, which contains some of the first drawings of Wallace & Gromit. “Aardman style” is often defined by its focus on common themes such as the British landscape, nature, machines – sometimes ingenious or irrational – and architectural sets with quirky details. This comes through in Aardman’s virtuosity for prototyping and handcrafting, and the pleasure taken in inventing something – common traits of both the characters and those creating them, as both are often busy constructing some of the craziest inventions with their hands.
The magic of cinema is what brings these worlds to life, thanks to light, an integral part of how the director presents a scene and tells the story, and the result of a close collaboration between the cinematographic and artistic departments, and thanks to the use of a lighting system similar to those employed in a theatre, allowing the makers to create extremely precise effects, where light structures and energises the space.
To show how the end result on screen is created, the exhibition includes a set from the film Shaun the Sheep, specially created for the exhibition by the lighting designers at Aardman, which allows us to observe the part that light plays in putting the finishing touches to a stop-motion film. Visitors can also immerse themselves in the Studios’ creative world through audiovisual content, including excerpts from Aardman’s most famous films: over 60 short films and feature films, hilarious TV ads and video clips.
With Shaun the Sheep & Friends, PAFF! will be opening its doors under its new guise as the International Museum of Comic Art. The space is home to a permanent collection of works by numerous comics masters and iconic designers of the “ninth art” and boasts a footprint of some 2,200 m2. The museum houses 200 original works and over 500 sketches by authors such as Italian comics artist Andrea Pazienza, master of American comics Art Spiegelman, Italian comics pioneer Benito Jacovitti, and the father of Peanuts, Charles M. Schulz. The list also includes Carl Barks, Chester Gould, Floyd Gottfredson, George McManus, Giorgio Cavazzano, Hugo Pratt, Magnus, Milo Manara, Milton Caniff and Will Eisner, all of whom are presented through scripts, rare publications, video clips, objects and memorabilia from international public and private collections.
Creative Credits
- Written by
- Lara Facco
- Image courtesy
- Aardman Studios. Peter Lord
- Image courtesy
- Aardman Studios. Shaun the Sheep and Friends
- Photography
- Gino Nardo
- Creative Credit
- Aardman Studios
