Staging the Page
02 December 2023 – 13 January 2024
Staging the Page, a solo exhibition featuring the gouache paintings and pencil sketches of Singapore-based illustrator and author Priscilla Tey. The exhibition showcased artworks from her three picture books In-Between Things, Twitchy Witchy Itch, and Counting in Dog Years. These books are published by Candlewick Press (USA) and distributed internationally. More than just books for children, picture books are an art form that captivates both young and old. It combines the magic of visual storytelling with the power of written words to deliver enchanting experiences that spur wonder or offer an escape. If the plot drives the narrative in a picture book, its fuel is when carefully selected words sit within thoughtfully designed layouts and construct meaning together. To achieve this, picture book illustrators often explore a multitude of compositional solutions and dive deep into the visual world of their stories, hoping to make their imagined spaces more believable and their stories more comprehensible. Staging the Page not only showcased the final artwork that eventually made it to print but also offered peeks into the journey of a page from its conception to completion. Often packed with detail, Tey’s pages are also carefully crafted to hold its viewer’s gaze and offer a discovery with each read. Subplots and secondary characters scatter themselves throughout the book, leaving something for the adults to explore even by the 10th time their child requests to read the book “again!”. In Staging the Page, original paintings without their accompanying texts were front and centre, allowing the detailed sets and characters to take the spotlight and perform their story.
