NORWICH.- During January the Gallery at NUCA is hosting Norfolk’s first ever exhibition of works by Jake and Dinos Chapman, etchings from the Hayward Touring programme. The Chapman brothers first came to prominence as part of the YBA (Young British Artists) group of the 1990’s. Their work was featured in the Royal Academy’s seminal 1997 exhibition ‘Sensation’, where a sculptural version of Goya’s disasters of war was shown. A theme they later reprised, when in 2003 they revisited Goya’s work by painting their own ghoulish imagery over an original set of etchings – a gesture that caused outrage in some quarters of the art world.

My Giant Colouring Book returns to this method of working, this time appropriating join-the-dot drawings from a children’s picture book. The naïve innocence of the illustrations triggers a wild outpouring of fantastical imagery far removed from the original dot formations. This series of 21 etchings, published by The Paragon Press, London in 2004, offers a fascinating introduction to the imaginations of two of Britain’s most inventive and subversive artists.

Many of the Chapmans’ favourite themes are found here, often with a dark undercurrent. Monstrous creatures and hallucinatory scenes emerge, bristling with grotesque humour and rich in allusions to art history: from medieval images of hell and damnation, to Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. The subjects include sabre-toothed owls, psychedelic grinning cats and bears trapped in the belly of the Loch Ness monster. In describing the series, Dinos Chapman commented, “(They) are about how wrong you could make an image”.

Norwich University College of the Arts is an independent higher education institution within the University sector that carries a 165-year history. The University College has a reputation of excellence, and attracts students regionally, nationally and internationally. The University College’s mission is to be a centre of excellence for creativity, learning and enterprise, fostering new talent for the creative industries and contributing to economic and social development.

For over 40 years, the Hayward Gallery has a played a key role in creating imaginative, high profile exhibitions in London and, through Hayward Touring Exhibitions, within the UK. Both Hayward Touring and the Arts Council Collection are managed by the Hayward Gallery on behalf of Arts Council England, and add to the Hayward’s distinctive national remit.