Talk
In Conversation with Sir Peter Blake
11 Jan 2016
Mercer Art Gallery
Harrogate, United Kingdom
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Sir Peter Blake - Hoofing, Bloomered, in the Moon
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Sir Peter Blake - The Sailors' Arms
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Sir Peter Blake - The Boys are Dreaming Wicked
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Sir Peter Blake - Mickey's Birthday Party
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Sir Peter Blake with art historian Marco Livingstone
Exhibition
SIR PETER BLAKE: Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood
2 Dec 2015 – 31 Jan 2016
Event times
The Mercer Art Gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 5pm, Sundays 2pm to 5pm, closed Mondays except Bank Holidays. Closes at 4pm from November to March.
Cost of entry
Free entry
Address
- Swan Road
- Harrogate
- HG1 2SA
- United Kingdom
Event map
The first showing in an English art gallery of Sir Peter Blake’s marvellous illustrations to Dylan Thomas’s extraordinary ‘play for voices’.
About
The show includes watercolours, prints, drawings and collages depicting the characters in Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood.
Under Milk Wood was commissioned by the BBC and was first broadcast in 1954 just after Thomas’s premature death in New York. Under Milk Wood is an emotive and hilarious account of a spring day in the fictional Welsh seaside village of Llareggub. We learn of the inhabitants' dreams and desires, their loves and regrets. We meet such characters as Captain Cat who dreams of his drowned former seafellows and Nogood Boyo who dreams of nothing at all. It is a unique and touching depiction of a village that has 'fallen head over bells in love'.
The artist Sir Peter Blake (a co-creator of the iconic sleeve design for the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) was a student at the Royal College of Art when he first heard Under Milk Wood. In the 1970s he became aware of Dylan Thomas’s play as a source of inspiration for making art. In 1986 Blake planned to illustrate a book with Michael Mitchell; he visited Laugharne, the Welsh fishing village where Thomas, his wife and family had lived, and he started making drawings.
He comments: ‘I became completely obsessed by the way Thomas communicates in the play with his mingling of themes, and that’s what I wanted to do in my illustrations. There are so many differing explorations of love.’
However, it was not until 2014 the writer’s centenary, that the book Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood, Images by Peter Blake was finally published by Enitharmon and the Queen Anne Press. This exhibition has been kindly lent by Sir Peter Blake and the publisher Enitharmon.
On Monday 11 January 2016 Sir Peter Blake will appear at the Mercer Art Gallery for a lunchtime event where he will be interviewed by the art historian and writer Marco Livingstone.
