Teenage superheroes exhibit at new Manga show

12:15pm Thursday 6th March 2008

Comics - childish or cult pastime?

Both, if the new Liveline exhibition at Richmond's Riverhouse Gallery is anything to go by.

Two shows for the price of one (or none in fact, as entry is free), Liveline is both an open exhibition of UK comic art and a showcase of the recent Manga Lives project, in which local teenagers produced their own work based on the Japanese comic form.

Manga, roughly translated, means whimsical, involuntary or irresponsible pictures. But we could all learn a bit from our Oriental friends, insists exhibition curator Mark de Novellis.

"People in this country see comics as something you grow out of," says de Novellis, who also oversaw Richmond's Comic Art exhibition in 2006.

"But most of the rest of the world has a completely different perception. In Japan, you see business men reading them on the tube. And in France, they class it as the ninth art, on a parallel with cinema."

Thanks to digital processing and the internet, however, comic art is flourishing in the UK underground, as evidenced by the 30 independent artists whose work will be exhibited in this show.

And even Brian Talbot, alternakid-turned-bestselling comic novelist, has given the show his blessing.

"It's definitely an artform," says de Novellis. "And that's what I want people to see. People will encounter it in a gallery context, both in oversized images on the walls and in the physical form of comic books. Nothing beats the original context when it comes to comic art."

For the Manga Lives project, artists Nathalie Palin and Wendy Elford exposed the 10 participants to Manga images from Astra Boy, Akira and Toyko Pop, alongside Western comics such as Marvel, Judge Dredd and even Peanuts.

The young artists then storyboarded narratives pertinent to their own lives, drawing them up, colouring them in and finally adding some text.

Says de Novellis: "Manga is something young people can relate to. Even if they haven't got an interest in fine art, they may still have read comics at some point. And by looking at manga, they are encountering something different and exciting - even on the most basic level that Japanese is read from right to left."

And it's been a therapeutic experience for participants, who were drawn from Richmond's Children Looked After scheme and the Positive Activity holiday initiative.

"When you look at the subject matter of comics," says de Novellis, "a lot of stories deal with transformation. If you've got a superhero, it's someone the creator identifies with. It's almost like wish fulfillment: I can become a hero and transform a certain event.' And these young people have definitely tapped into that idea in relation to their own experiences."

It's been just as personal for de Novellis himself. "Comics were my first love," he says. "I used to script and draw my own and that's how I got into curating. If you think about it, they both involve the juxtaposition of word and images. So I wanted to make this a fantastic exhibition."

Liveline/Manga Lives, The Riverside Gallery, Old Town Hall, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond, Wednesday, March 5 to April, March 12, open Mon/Thur/Fri 10am-6pm, Tues/Sat 10am-5pm, Wed 10am-8pm, free entry, call 020 8831 6000, visit richmond.gov.uk/arts. An accompanying book, Manga Lives, is available at the exhibition.

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