Monday 17 October 2011

Robot Invasion!

Thar be a new exhibition going down at Hove Museum at the moment. Robot Invasion! is a HUGE collection of robots, space-themed toys and illustrations belonging to Sussex-based illustrator Chris McEwan, who not only is a member of Brighton Illustrators Group, but was one of my tutors at uni.

It was very nice to see the temporary exhibition spaces in proper use again; the last few times I'd been to Hove Museum they'd been empty. However, for an exhibition that had only been open two days, some of the cases were in need of a bit of attention. The contents of several of the boxes were obscured as the small strip of card masking the strip lights in each one had fallen down. Not a problem, I'm sure it was just a case of needing to use stronger tape and could be fixed in a jiffy, but it was a little disappointing. The sheer range of robots and toys well made up for my minor niggles, though. Check some of these babies out:

robots1

jet gun

out of this world

dino

steps

space outlaw

mr chief

space gun

I particularly like the yellow-backed cases the toys were displayed in. Makes a nice, bright and fitting change to the usual white. The cases are painted a dark grey on the outside. Grey and yellow being one of my fave colour combos, naturally I was going to like it.

The exhibition is on now and runs until 21st February 2012. Get yourself down there, it's well worth a look, along with the rest of the exhibits upstairs. I hadn't been up there for a year or two and had forgotten the lovely Wizard's Attic and the tiny cinema with chairs and decoration from the old Regent Cinema in Brighton, which is now Boots.

(The tearoom is also worth a visit, natch. I had a very nice savoury cream tea with the yummiest chive butter for my ENORMOUS cheese scone. It also comes with a little bowl of Mini Cheddars, kettle chips, and Twiglets. I had to give those to Hubbo, obv. Can't have Marmite flavoured evilness spoiling my scone experience.)

2 comments:

Paul said...

Wow! Chris was my tutor at Brighton and I remember his collection was amazing 30 years ago, must be incredible now!

Emm@ said...

I think it's only a very, very small selection of his collection! It's very impressive, though.