Illustration has found a new home near Kings Cross and this inaugural Quentin Blake exhibition is the perfect housewarming.
It is impossible to separate Blake from his magical and fruitful collaboration with Roald Dahl, and a good chunk of the work on show is from such classics as The Twits and The BFG. Alongside this though, we see storyboards from Blake’s own wordless book Clown and his riotously colourful illustrations for the Folio Society edition of Voltaire’s Candide.
For me, the highlight of the exhibition was a look at his work on Michael Rosen’s The Sad Book, an exploration of Rosen’s grief following the death of his son Eddie. Nowhere is the power of Blake’s illustration and intuition felt more powerfully than in the sequence of snapshots of Eddie’s life, where the final frame on the page is left heart-breakingly blank.
In the last room there is a film of Blake in his workshop and a space for visitors to explore the books featured in the exhibition. Although the thoughtful curation of Blake’s work makes it more than worthwhile, I did wonder if more space at the fledgling gallery could’ve been opened up (there did seem to be additional rooms not in use).
However, Blake’s work seems so perfectly-formed that there is a real, rare pleasure in glimpsing the method behind it. I look forward to seeing what the gallery offers next.
Quentin Blake: Inside Stories runs at the House of Illustration until 2nd November.
are you sitting comfortably? 