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NEIL PACKER – V&A ILLUSTRATION AWARDS 2024

 

We are delighted to celebrate the nomination of Neil Packer as one of eight illustrators shortlisted for this year’s V&A Illustration Award (Adult Fiction).  This biennial competition is the UK’s most prestigious award; highlighting and championing artwork created for the UK market by artists from around the world and judged by a panel of leading, prominent industry experts.

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A peripatetic childhood, living all over the world, allowed Neil to acquire inspiration far and wide, and growing up he was fascinated by illustrated books from the ‘50s and 60’s. The sum of these parts all contributed to his happy years at The Colchester College of Art, where for, the most part, he studied graphic design rather than illustration, which in his own words ‘turned out to be far more valuable’.

 

Forty years on Neil is a multi-award winning internationally acclaimed artist, who has worked for many of the world’s leading publishers including Walker Books, and notably The Folio Society, with an impressive array of titles including Catch 22, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and more recently The Complete Plays, put forward for the current V&A Award, to name but a few. For a bibliography of his Folio Society output, and a biographical interview please follow the links on this page. 

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In keeping with the times Neil now works for the most part digitally, allowing him greater speed and freedom to produce work for his ever-growing commissions. As such, the work we are delighted to show here in our online Exhibition Cabinet represents some of his last remaining available work produced by hand, for the sumptuously-illustrated Odyssey and Iliad, published by Walker Books in 2012, and was the focus of two solo-exhibitions at Illustrationcupboard Gallery, London.

 

Of note to collectors, the work in this Cabinet Exhibition is the only original artwork left available for purchase. A selection of 50 editioned prints has been produced from page spreads for the Folio Society Shakespeare. For further information on these please contact us directly. 

 

Awards
2021 The BolognaRagazzi Award, Non-Fiction, for One of a Kind
2022 The winner of the Limited Editions category of the British Book Design and Production Awards, for The Divine Comedy
2023 The Cento Children's Literature Prize, and also the Premio Andersen, also for One of a Kind

2024 V&A Illustration Award (Adult Fiction) Shortlisted for Shakespeare - The Complete Plays

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All Artwork is available for purchase

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