Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting online lecture from the Victoria and Albert Museum introducing the 2026 illustration awards exhibition at the museum. Curator Annemarie Bilclough explained how the awards operates then talked us neatly through the runners up and winners in each category. She ended with the overall winner, Annabel Wright, who then joined the talk to tell us more about her poster campaign for an exhibition “Views of Glasgow : A Window into Communities” for the Hunterian Museum. She explained the images in the work and how she re-ordered them for various formats. I have been to the exhibition since and it was useful to have done the talk as the categories were not that clear in the show.

Interesting exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum of the winners of this year’s Illustration awards. I always try to go to this show and I always discover new work I’d not come across before. There are four categories for a book cover, book illustration, journalistic illustration and student work. My favourite this year, shown here, is a book cover by Kerry Hyndman for a Stella Gibbons book I’d not come across so I discovered a picture and a book. As it was the 50th anniversary of the award there was a wall dedicated to previous winners and runners up and I remembered a few. It was odd to see Quintin Blake just getting a second in 1996. Closes 9 October 2022

Nice little exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum showing the prize winners from their illustration awards for this year. Evidently this award has been running since 1972 but I must admit I’d not come across it before.   There were three categories book cover design, book illustration and illustrated journalism as well as a student award. The book illustration award has been won by “Heimat” by Nora Krug, a memoir of her journal investigating the lives of family members in Nazi Germany. It includes family photos and archive material brought together with illustrations to tell the story. It did make me want to read the book. The journalism award went to A. Richard Allen for a piece on the front page of the Money section of the Daily Telegraph. I loved the student award which went to Sophie Burrows’s wordless book which looked at loneliness in crowded places such as tube platforms. I have used a photograph of the book cover award work by Yehrin Tong to mark the ...