Bradford Literature Festival Challenges artist Rian Hughes to re-visit his Yesterday’s Tomorrows

Dan Dare,  by Rian Hughes

Dan Dare, by Rian Hughes

There’s a chance to travel back in time with Dan Dare artist Rian Hughes this Sunday at the Bradford Literature Festival, who joins author Andy Croft, choreographer Jonathan Watkins and moderator Michael Stewart to discuss ‘How The Future Looked From The Past‘…

Our literary and artistic visions of the world to come have shifted constantly over time, from the art-deco nightmares of Fritz Laing’s Metropolis to the grimly inventive slang of Alex and his droogs in Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange. With hindsight, these attempts to read the look of the coming ages have much to tell us about the time they were created and the preoccupations of their era.

Going back to the future are three artists whose work has considered the state of things to come. Graphic designer and comic book artist Rian Hughes’ work for titles including 2000AD and “Dan Dare” from the early 1990s onwards, imagined the future in a stylised manner that has since been widely imitated; a retrospective of his artwork published by Knockabout was titled, appropriately, Yesterday’s Tomorrows

Meanwhile, choreographer Jonathan Watkins recently produced a new stage interpretation of Orwell’s 1984 for Northern Ballet, putting a twenty-first century spin on the classic vision of a totalitarian future, while Andy Croft’s novel 1948 took the supposed original title for Orwell’s novel and used Pushkin sonnets to tell a noir-ish whodunnit tale, hidden inside which was Orwell’s own book, rewritten to depict our current reality as dystopian horrorshow.

Join our trio of time-travellers (and moderator Michael Stewart) as they look at the ways we have visualised the future in the past, drawing on their own work as they go and mining the characters and texts that have inspired them along the way. Pack a sonic screwdriver.

• How The Future Looked From The Past 1.00pm – 2.15pm Sunday 22nd May 2016 The French Ballroom, The Midland Hotel, Bradford. Full price tickets £6 | Click here for booking information and more about the panellists 


• Other comic-related events at the Festival include an Alex Rider Character Design Workshop (Age 10+) with artist Emma Vieceli, the Q20 Events Superheroes Show, a screening of The Incredibles Comix Creatrix – Women on The Cutting Edge of Comics with Asia Alfasi, Kripa Joshi, Corinne Pearlman, Mary Talbot, Paul Gravett; a Digital Comics making workshop with Daniel Merlin Godbrey and Leah Moore; Emma Vieceli, Chie Kutsuwada talk Manga Shakespeare; Breaking into Comics with Paul Gravett, Leah Moore, Corinne Pearlman, Mike McKenny, Daniel Merlin Goodbrey; We Love Comics with David Barnett, Zoe Marriott, Nikesh Shukla, Emma Vieceli, Mike McKenny;  21st Century Wonder Women with Aaron Haroon Rashid, Kripa Joshi, Zoe Marriott, The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia with Mike McKenny; Bryan Talbot, Mary Talbot, Mike McKenny; Superman was a Foundling with Tahmima Anam, Lemn Sissay, Hilary Robinson, Daniel Hahn;  Peter Pan: The Graphic Novel – Live! With Stephen White, Aliki Chapple; the Manga Jiman Panel Competition Launch with Lorenzo Fruzza, Chie Kutsuwada, Katja Hammond, Zarina Liew, Paul Gravett; and much more!

Thanks to Paul Gravett for the info



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