Mike B and the 1990 Eagle Exhibition in Southport

As promised, Paul, some old snaps of the Southport 1990 Eagle Exhibition. As the huge banner over the front of the Atkinson Art Gallery showed, the exhibition was co- sponsored by a national building company called Sibec who were building a massive shopping complex in the town. With private money behind it the local council felt they could do the Eagle celebration justice, and thinking it wouldn’t cost them a penny they spent and spent... and spent. The free exhibition was probably the most successful event the Art Centre had ever staged and brought a lot of people to the town.

 

 

A lot of time and effort went into producing quality brochures and flyers. The souvenir brochure was in the style of an original Eagle comic with an instalment from the Dan Dare story ‘The Ship That Lived’. Inside was full of original articles and a double page cut-away of the Anastasia, Dan Dare’s personal ship. A colour flyer and full size poster was produced incorporating original artwork.

 

 

Members of the Eagle Society loaned original artwork, toys and professionally commissioned models. (Some made by modeller, Martin Bower) Original studio props were made available by family members of artist, Frank Hampson and editor, Marcus Morris.

 

 

Some talented lads from the local art school created a full size mock up of a Dan Dare space craft. You can see a picture of my son who was four at the time at the controls. Even the gallery spent a few bob on tracking down the first 14 or so issues of the original Eagle comic . These were the issues produced in Southport prior to the Eagle studio moving to Epson.

Even the New Eagle gave away free issues of it’s latest edition. The exhibition filled the entire gallery.

Apart from the displays there was a full size reconstruction of the original Eagle studio, a young boys bedroom from the fifties and a professionally made scale model of Space Fleet Headquarters complete with working monorail!

Apart from providing a couple of models, my contribution was creating a hastily built moonscape which was around 8’ square. It featured a moonbase, a moon lander and a space station .Visitors could see the scene by looking through a small porthole in the wall as if they were up in space. I thought it was quite innovative – but I’ll reserve judgement on whether it was successful.

 

 

Anyway, the exhibition itself was a great success, boosted by the enthusiastic response from staff at the Art Gallery, the Eagle mob, local fans and helpers. The Council believing that it was somebody else's money well spent enjoyed the moment.

However, the Council’s self satisfaction was to be short lived as Sibec, went bust taking with it any sponsorship money. The Council had to foot the entire bill. But, it didn’t put them off. For the fiftieth Eagle anniversary at the Gallery they put another, somewhat smaller exhibition on, and this time people were charged to get in. I was even witness to some Council jobsworth trying to charge artist, Don Harley admission as he arrived as a special guest at the opening.

 

 

But I guess those Treens are everywhere!

Mike B.