SOUTHBANK CENTRE

Jake & Dinos Chapman: My Giant Colouring Book

My Giant Colouring BookEven today, when everything in art is supposedly permitted, the work of Jake and Dinos Chapman still has the whiff of scandal and transgression. Their obsession with the ‘dark’, chaotic imagery of the unconscious, where unreason rules, is re-enforced by a consummate mastery of traditional skills in whatever medium they deploy. 

The etchings in My Giant Colouring Book, published by Paragon Press in 2004, seem to be seething with grotesque imagery, yet on inspection they are surprisingly innocuous; there is nothing here to offend an anxious parent or teacher. 19 of the 21 images are based loosely on join-the-dots drawings from children’s picture books, which were copied through photo-etching on to copper plates. These have triggered surrealistic interventions, improvised monstrous creatures, fantastic landscapes and macabre incidents, deviating wildly from the prescribed dot-to-dot formation. Dinos has said that they ‘are about how wrong you could make an image. How you could use nodal points and ignore them at the same time’.

The Chapman brothers drew their responses to the colouring book pages onto mylar sheets, which were then transferred through a light-sensitive process on to the plates. The resulting images, all - ironically - monochrome, are dense, hallucinatory improvisations that subvert the apparent innocence of the original illustrations. They are rich in art-historical allusions, from medieval images of hell and damnation to Picasso, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Paul McCarthy’s assaults on icons of folk culture. The prints offer a brilliant introduction to the imaginations of two of Britain’s most inventive and subversive artists.

Tour details: 

30 May - 28 June 2009
Museum and Art Gallery, Swindon

4 July - 2 August 2009
The Brindley, Runcorn

8 August - 6 September 2009
The Gallery, Discovery Centre, Winchester

12 September - 11 October 2009
College of Art and Design, Leeds

17 October - 22 November 2009
Art Gallery and Museum, Cheltenham

11 - 30 January 2010
Arts Centre, Jersey

13 February - 14 March 2010
Museum and Art Gallery, Doncaster

20 March - 18 April 2010
Ropewalk Contemporary Art and Craft, Barton upon Humber

24 April - 23 May 2010
The Gallery, York College

29 May - 27 June 2010
(provisional booking pending confirmation of venue)

3 July - 1 August 2010
Beldam Gallery, Uxbridge

7 August - 5 September 2010
AVAILABLE

11 September - 10 October 2010
St Paul's School, London

16 October - 14 November 2010
Oriel Mwldan, Cardigan

8 January - 6 February 2011
University of Essex Gallery, Colchester

Tour continues

For more information please contact Alison Maun: alison.maun@southbankcentre.co.uk

Image credits:
Jake and Dinos Chapman, My Giant Colouring Book 5, 2004 © Jake and Dinos Chapman and The Paragon Press, London, 2007