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Shaun Tan creates captivating and disorientating worlds that have illustrated the dreamscapes of a generation of Australian kids.
I find The Red Tree (2001) very poignant. It explores Tan’s first hand experience of clinical depression; a lonely red-headed girl goes about her day accompanied by her complex feelings and anxieties.
Almost unnoticed in each picture is a small red leaf, symbolising hope of a better day tomorrow.
The language of emotion is further explored in The Arrival (2006), a textless graphic novel which literally transcends words. It follows the movements of an immigrant entering a fully realised imaginary world that sometimes, but not quite, resembles our own.
Akin to the real life immigrant experience the protagonist experiences the deep alienation of being unable to express his true feelings and encounters people that care not to take the time to understand him.
In the contemporary context of the international plight of refugees, and more specifically Australia’s domestic migrant policy, the work takes on a significance that is almost too painful to look at. Persevere however and the tale has affirming lessons to impart.
Drawing on a childhood obsession with The Twilight Zone and the stories of Ray Bradbury, many of Tan’s early illustrations honed in on the proximity of fairy tales to nightmares and used such diverse materials as glass, metal, cuttings from books and dead insects.
Of The Lost Thing (2000) Tan's adapation of which won him the 2011 Academy Award for animated film adaptation, one critic described the creator's world as ‘at once banal and uncanny, familiar and strange, local and universal, reassuring and scary, intimate and remote.’
Personally I find his illustrations reminiscent of Raymond Briggs, one of my favourites as a kid.
#folkhorror #shauantan #thearrival #thelostthing #theredtree #raymondbriggs #twilightzone #raybradbury #australianauthor #nightmares #surrealart
#folkhorror #shauantan #thearrival #thelostthing #theredtree #raymondbriggs #twilightzone #raybradbury #australianauthor #nightmares #surrealart
