The Future is Illustrated: On the opening of the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration and the power of human craftsmanship.
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
Isabella Jones Bartle
On a relaxed Monday evening, I tuned in to the BBC to watch British illustrator Quentin Blake draw whilst talking about his new Centre for Illustration. Sitting in his blanketed wicker armchair in his home studio, his pen glides and excitedly dances across the paper. A constant chatter about characters and stories arises as Blake leans closer to his desk and presenter and fellow artist, Adebanji Alade. Amidst a flurry of paper, the brilliantly-coloured spines of his illustrated stories upon the shelves, and an assortment of pencil holders dotted across the studio, he continues to scratch away at the surface.
During this conversation, Blake spoke about the strong, yet still unrecognised, tradition of illustration in England. He first founded the centre, originally named The House of Illustration, in 2002. The aim was presenting illustration as its own medium and art form, where it has often been marginalised to the status of a preliminary drawing or rough sketch.
And so, after twenty years in the making, the UK’s first and only charity for illustration and the world’s largest dedicated space for illustration is finally here. The Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, which opened on 5th June 2026 in Clerkenwell, London, offers a garden and cafe, three new temporary exhibitions, a creative studio, and an illustration library. The energised collection and archive hold drawings, posters, and picture books from across the United Kingdom, drawing from new, unexpected sources of inspiration. What was once an 18th-century windmill, engine house, and coal store is now a space for learning and creating, celebrating illustration as a form of communication, personal expression, and storytelling.
On the ground floor, Queer as Comics charts the ways comic strips have been created, read, and shared by LGBTQIA+ communities to share queer stories, ideas, and desires, during a long history of censorship and suppression. The exhibition displays artworks from the 1940s to the modern day, allowing the viewer to enjoy distinctive and eccentric illustration styles.
Examining works by Finnish-Swedish comic strip author, painter, and illustrator Tove Jansson and Finnish artist Touko Valio Laaksonen, known by the pseudonym Tom of Finland, was especially interesting to me. The display allowed a special insight into how cartoonists used the comic strip form to bring forbidden desires to life, often concealing these feelings and ideas behind fantastical fictional characters. In Jansson’s comic strips, the heartwarming, compassionate, and wise Moomin character Too-ticky was based on Jansson’s life partner Tuulikki Pietilä. The character Mymble, belonging to a family of many children, was named after the Swedish slang word ‘mymla,’ meaning ‘to make love.’
Throughout, the exhibition considered the importance of tactile and interactive surfaces, for children and adults alike. Queer as Comics offers a pair of stools for visitors to sit and leaf through original comic books, as well as select complete copies of the comics and graphic novels on display. The exhibition’s angle felt utterly new and exciting to explore.
Before I ventured upstairs, I entered the library, a gentle, bright room which curves around the corner, leading to a drawing space. I took my time, working through Tove Jansson’s complete comic strips, a history of Manga, J.R.R. Tolkien’s illustrative maps, and the second volume of Picturebook Makers by dPICTUS, a platform for illustrators and picture book makers to share their projects and creative processes. The Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration intends to restock shelves periodically, creating an ever-evolving collection to reference. For illustrators like myself, each page harbours boundless inspiration on colourways, intricate details, typography, and the magical history of making.
Displayed at the heart of the building, British Sri-Lankan designer and illustrator Murugiah’s first solo exhibition, MURUGIAH: Ever Feel Like…, felt like a kaleidoscopic interlude between one floor and the next. Murugiah’s larger-than-life soft installation immerses the visitor into a vivid, surreal dream. Murugiah aims to represent universal themes and feelings from childhood and stages of growing up in new, inspired ways, bringing forward memories from his youth, such as playing Nintendo, listening to pop funk music, and watching Saturday morning cartoons. Whilst these specific themes are not necessarily what I associate with my own childhood, each artwork conveyed universal feelings of play, growth, and wild exploration. Within the space, there is the opportunity to reminisce on both the universal pleasures of childhood and one’s own memories, as Murugiah entwines the recognisable and unrecognisable in his illustrations.
At the top of the Centre for Illustration awaits Quentin Blake: Performance, exploring Blake’s theatrical and performance art influences across 77 years of illustrating. The exhibition reveals a rare look into Blake’s original artworks and drafts, even showcasing his watercolour palette, brushes, and ink dip pens. The concave walls allowed for the exhibition’s narrative to unfold and reveal itself with each step. Blake’s happy splashes of watercolour offset against the pinkish-red walls became evocative of a circus tent, as inky dancers on draped fabric hung from the ceiling.
But what does the anticipated unveiling of the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration say about the public’s artistic interests? Are fine art museums and contemporary gallery installations feeling predictable? Are we searching for something closer to the heart, the home, and the human? Outside of the gallery context, luxury brands and designers lean on the imaginations of contemporary illustrators to bring their concepts and products to life. Look back on the eclectic collaborations between Diptyque and Olaf Hajek, Hermés and Rop van Mierlo, and Liberty’s LBTY. Fragrance with Alfred Bramsen!
What is so deeply treasured about illustration is that it can be emotional, optimistic, refreshing, and intimate. The diverse range of illustration styles on show at the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration prove the endless possibilities of human creation, and crucially, human perspectives. Art which can distinguish itself from the great influx of visual content consumed in the digital world has proven to be a luxury in the 2020s. For the first time, the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration makes room and a monumental statement for illustration as an independent medium.
The Centre opens its collection and studios for use, a place of practice and collaboration as well as observation, a way of learning which visitors are more than ready to get behind. In the centre’s creative studio and across the historic site, visitors are beginning to immerse themselves in activities such as group sketching workshops, courses on developing illustration practice, local community illustration projects, and talks by passionate, up-and-coming and award-winning illustrators.
MURUGIAH: Ever Feel Like… is on view until 31st August 2026, Queer as Comics is open until 4th October 2026, and Quentin Blake: Performance is on display until April 2027.
