Curator hopes London Aardman exhibition can inspire future animators

The curator of a London exhibition of Aardman characters including Wallace and Gromit has said he hopes it will inspire new generation of animators.

Inside Aardman: Wallace And Gromit And Friends opens at the Young V&A in Bethnal Green on Thursday, where it will feature 150 exhibits, including the clay models used in the studio’s popular films and TV series, along with interactive exhibits for children.

The exhibition’s curator, Alex Newson, told the Press Association: “Young V&A is a museum for children (and) their families, and we’re here to inspire creativity, to help them be creative in small ways in their daily lives, but also in larger ways.

“And also to start thinking about creative careers and the skills that they can develop that might one day lead to roles in the creative kind of industry when they grow up.”

Celebrating Aardman’s 50th anniversary, the exhibition will showcase Wallace’s love interest Lady Tottington, the distinctive rocket from Wallace And Gromit: A Grand Day Out (1989), and the duo’s living room set, as well as items from favourites including Chicken Run and Shaun The Sheep.

Mr Newson added: “It’s an amazing thing to open a new exhibition. It’s been amazing to work with Aardman for the past 18 months to bring the show together, and actually the last few weeks, when you see everything come into the gallery and get built and installed, it’s a really exciting moment.

“And now the most important thing is when we open the doors to the public, and people come in and start to see the things that we’ve been working on for so long.

“50 years is an incredibly long time, and it’s a really rich, kind of dense archive, (to) have the opportunity to trawl through all of that and pick things across those 50 years is rare and a real … privilege to be able to do.

“And we’ve kind of really tried to make sure that we’ve got things from the early days, from some of the earliest things that the Aardman founders did, right through to their most recent features.

“We’ve got some set models and some puppets from A Vengeance Most Fowl, one of the most recent features, some of which have never been on display before and people have never seen before, other than seeing them when they’re in the film.

“So it’s really exciting to work with the team and talk to them about how they can be brought to life and put into a museum.”

Other exhibits include early character sketches, concept art, puppets, props, set models and optical illusion toys.

The exhibition will run until November 15 with tickets available from the Young V&A website.