The Real & The Imaginary: Bendigo Art Gallery August 9 – September 1, 2013

'The Visitor' from Tales from Outer Suburbia, acrylic & oils on paper, 2007

Presented in partnership with La Trobe University for Bendigo Writers Festival, the exhibition Shaun Tan: The Real and the Imaginary presents an overview of my work as a painter and illustrator, from early childhood to the present (including work for as yet unpublished books), from tiny sketchbook doodles to large scale canvases, and from commercial illustration to personal artwork. Almost all of these pieces are from my own collection and many previously unexhibited. Admission is free: for more info, visit the Bendigo Art Gallery. (Bendigo is a major regional centre of Victoria, Australia, and has one of the country's oldest art galleries - always worth a visit.)

The Lost Thing exhibition at ACMI, July 2013 - January 2014

Illustration from the picture book The Lost Thing, Lothian Books, 2000. Acrylic and oils on paper.

Still from The Lost Thing animated film, Passion Pictures Australia & Screen Australia. 
Digital rendering by Tom Bryant.

Opening this month at ACMI, The Australian Centre for the Moving Image at Federation Square in Melbourne, is a free exhibition charting the process of creating the short animated film The Lost Thing, from early origins as kitchen table doodles to complex digital animation (you can also watch the film in it's entirely in previously unreleased HD). The Lost Thing is a story about a boy living in a bureaucratic metropolis, who discovers a lonely, unclassifiable creature that nobody else wants to know about. The animated adaptation spanned ten years and left behind many boxes and drives of concept sketches, developmental drawings, paintings, animation and sound tests; from these a selective representation has been displayed within a carefully designed 'Lost Thing' space (curated by Fiona Trigg).  Find out more about the exhibition at ACMI, including related programs.