Showtown: the museum of fun and entertainment, and Blackpool’s first museum, opens its doors on the iconic Golden Mile on 15 March after six years of development.
Across six interactive exhibition spaces, Showtown is an immersive, behind- the- scenes journey through what makes the seaside town famous. A multi- layered and visually rich experience, the museum celebrates and details the unique Blackpool aesthetic and its richly layered cultural heritage; seaside, circus, magic, show, dance and illuminations, and the entertainers who put the town on the map.
Showtown uses eye-catching graphics and large scale artworks by Alex Williamson who was commissioned by Cason Mann to enhance the experience, visually weaving the museum’s interactive exhibits, objects and stories together.
For this project, Alex worked with visual material from the Heritage Collection; fabulous archives of printed ephemera, old posters, postcards and photography, to create a series of large scale collage artworks that reinterpret the archive materials and help bring to life ‘Showtown’ as an immersive, engaging family experience.
Showtown, the museum, depicts Blackpool as a kind of ‘collage’ formed over time by the collision of so many groups of people and activities: holiday makers old and young, punks and magicians, comic fans and ballroom dancers, acrobats and fortune tellers. The immersive environment created is a historically rich and often chaotic collage of competing signs, buildings, stories and events constantly throwing up unexpected juxtapositions for the visitor.
Traditionally a trip to Blackpool offered a release from the fixed nature of everyday life and work and the museum’s mix of stories, characters, imagery, sounds (and even smells) is curated to capture the jumbled sense of fun and the 'chaos' of a walk down the ‘Golden Mile’, where people let off steam and unexpected adventures are to be found on the piers and in the sideshows, entertainments, dance halls and nightlife.
The collage artworks, which feature throughout the museum as setworks or wallpapers, weave in and out of interactive exhibits and historical artefacts, tying together these overlaid narratives and spaces, visualising the atmospheric social and cultural resonance of Blackpool and its origins as a northern English working class resort.
As one of Blackpool’s favourite sons, Eric Morecambe, puts it in his famous piano-playing sketch, in Blackpool we are always ‘playing the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order’. A statement that describes the experience of and creative approach to Showtown perfectly.
Showtown opens in Blackpool on 15 March
Photography by Simon Critchley
You can also read Creative Review's write up on the museum here
Alex's full portfolio can be reviewed here.
Doug John Miller's cover for Chemistry World magazine has recently been shortlisted for this year's Association of Illustrators World Illustration Awards. Doug was commissioned to create 3 illustrations for Chemistry World's May 2023 issue on energy storage. The illustrations detailed the potentiality and production of lithium-based storage.
We're very pleased to announce the return of Peter Grundy AKA Grundini to Début Art. Peter has been shaping visual narratives for four decades. As a pioneer of infographics, he has developed a remarkable ability to communicate complex messages with visual simplicity. In 1980 he co-founded Grundy & Northedge, where over 26 years he developed an approach to design more about explanation than selling. Today, he continues his ground breaking work under the name Grundini, helping clients convey messages effectively and beautifully through visual storytelling. Notable clients; 1980 to 2000 Pentagram, The World Bank, The United Nations, Unicef, The British Council, The British Library, The Imperial War Museum, HMS Belfast, The Imperial War Museum, The V&A, Times Newspapers and Readers Digest Notable clients; 2000 to present day Shell International, World Economic Forum, World Energy Council, Institute of Civil Engineers, Harvard University, University of California, Alan Fletcher, Th...
We are delighted to announce that Début Art now represents illustrator Liam Eisenberg. Liam Eisenberg is an illustrator based in New York. His work relies on bold outlines and graphic colors to communicate narrative and conceptual ideas. He is a graduate of Montclair State University (BFA Illustration & Animation) and School of Visual Arts (MFA Illustration). In addition to freelancing, he teaches illustration at St. John’s University in Queens, NY. One of Liam’s main strengths is his figurative work. He depicts people in relatable and surreal situations. Liam has an ability to tackle a wide range of topics, taking complex subjects and communicating them in simple ways. His work relies on strong linework and bold colors. You can see Liam's full portfolio here.
We are delighted to announce that Début Art now represents Italian illustrator Gianluca Folì. Gianluca Folì is an award-winning illustrator who lives and works in Rome. He likes pizza but doesn't play the mandolin. In more than 20-years of his career, Gianluca has pursued a path of study, of gaze, of search for his own intimate vocabulary. He explores the connection with things, visually referencing the objective correlative in the poetry of Thomas Eliot and Eugenio Montale which clearly represents emotions through things and the breaking of the boredom of everyday life. Gianluca's images stem from this narrative, transformed into shapes and colours by an alchemical process, with elegant momentum and modulation of the visual. The creative force of his images is balanced by a tightrope walking technique, in a happy and magical balance between drawing and color, between reality and the surreal. The arrival at a more direct code, made of synthesis and simplification, suggesting and ev...