Cut Lino

There's a delightful show running at the Gallery on the first floor of the Herne Bay Museum in William Street:

"Cut Lino"  by Hugh Ribbans

As the name would suggest, this is an exhibition of linocuts, and they are lovely - so lovely, in fact, that I bought one on sight - and that doesn't happen often!

In the entry to the gallery room, there's a display case showing some of tools of Hugh's trade and descriptons of how he works. One singularly brilliant example is Hugh making a huge lino cut print of an elephant using a steam-roller  to do the squashing! Better still, on one wall is the lino cut he used, and on the facing wall is the resulting print he made.

It's a cracking little show, so do pop in before it closes on 14th July.

Olympic Cartoons

​There's an entertaining and topical new exhibition at the Museum, in the upstairs exhibition room. It's a selection of Olympic-themed cartoons from the past few decades, provided by the British Cartoon Archive. It's an interesting slice through history - do pop in for a peep.

The director of the BCA, Nicholas Hiley, came along to the opening to give us some background about the cartoons and tell us about the BCA.

The British Cartoon Archive is located in Canterbury at the University of Kent’s Templeman Library. It has a library, archive, and exhibition gallery, and is dedicated to the history of British cartooning over the last two hundred years. They hold the artwork for more than 150,000 British editorial, socio-political, and pocket cartoons, supported by large collections of comic strips, newspaper cuttings, books and magazines.

The sheer quantity of material they have is amazing - for example, the Giles archive arrived in TWO removal lorries! They're busily digitising their collection, which means that you can find tens of thousands of cartoons online on their website - have a look, but be warned: it's very diverting!

​FoHBM

Top Notch Papier Mâché!

Total Pap’s Winter Warmer!

An exhibition from popular local papier mâché artists

Justin Mitchell & Emily Firmin

This is a simply delightful show - it just makes you want to smile as work your way round it. There are papier mâché pictures-cum-sculptures by Emily Firmin, and automata by Justin Mitchell - that's a rough division, I think there's a fair bit of overlap in terms of who does what.

The automata are irresistible - you simply have to turn the little handles to see what happens. The papier mâché works are very engaging, and funny. Go along, have a look and enjoy yourself - open every day between 10am and 4pm.

​FoHBM