Jake and Dinos Chapman: My Giant Colouring Book

About

Jake and Dinos Chapman are brothers known for their controversial art. But The Hayward Gallery have provided an excellent touring exhibition which offers a brilliant introduction to the imaginations of two of Britain's most inventive and subversive artists. Even today, when everything in art is supposedly permitted, the work of Jake and Dinos Chapman still has the whiff of scandal or purposeful misbehaviour. They have an obsession with the ‘dark', chaotic imagery of the unconscious, where unreason rules. While much of their art is shocking and confrontational (and designed to be), they are actually very skilfully executed and this is often overlooked. 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 exhibition will fill about half the gallery, so has provided the perfect opportunity for The Gallery to invite a local school to create something inspired by the Chapman's work. Introducing… Toy Box Transplants Inspired by the Chapman Brothers exhibition, students from The Henry Beaufort School went back to their early childhoods and used colouring books as the basis to create dark, sinister and twisted toy characters and animations. There is nothing here to offend an anxious parent or teacher. The images and toys are not offensive, but may be scary for under 8yrs unaccompanied.