THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH 2025! Last year at Thought Bubble Avery Hill launched the Adrift on a Painted Sea exhibition which combined work from Tim Bird’s graphic memoir about his late mother Sue alongside some of her paintings. This year they are back with another exhibition at the Mercer Gallery in Harrogate.
‘Vision & Labour: Making Comics – The Art of Avery Hill Publishing’ “gives insight into their development and philosophy, with deep-dives into some of the books that have been milestones in their catalogue. As the audience goes on this journey through the history of the publisher, they will witness the development of some of the most interesting and important creators working in comics, and an important snapshot of the UK comics landscape over the past decade.”
Poster art by Kristyna Baczynski
Added bonus element? I’m doing the guided tour of the exhibition on the Sunday at Thought Bubble! In the meantime I caught up with AHP’s Katriona Chapman to chat about the featured artists, the exhibition’s wider aims, and the importance of getting comics into gallery spaces…
ANDY OLIVER: Before we talk about ‘Vision & Labour: Making Comics’ let’s look back to 2024 and the Tim Bird/Adrift on a Painted Sea exhibition. What were reactions like to that event, also at the Mercer Art Gallery? What kind of feedback did you and Tim get?
KATRIONA CHAPMAN: It was lovely to be able to do that last year – it was amazing to see some of the paintings from the book in real life in a gallery setting. In the book Tim talks about how his mum almost never showed her paintings publicly while she was alive. We were really happy for Tim to be able to launch the book in the middle of his own exhibition of his and his mum’s art.
Donya Todd’s work at the Mercer Art Gallery
Karen Southworth (the curator we’ve worked with on both projects) told me that visitors really enjoyed that exhibition, as small as it was. There was also the added bonus of many of the landscapes being local North Yorkshire locations, so I’m sure many visitors were familiar with the places. Our hope was for that exhibition to sort of be a pre-cursor to our big one this year – we’re on a mission to get Harrogate and the wider area really into comics now that it’s the home of Thought Bubble! And we hope to explain our passion for the medium to gallery visitors who may not have any idea about comics or graphic novels.
AO: Who can visitors expect to see in the exhibition when they visit it in Harrogate?
CHAPMAN: The exhibition officially features 16 creators published by us – Kristyna Baczynski, Tim Bird, Katriona Chapman, Tom Humberstone, Charlot Kristensen, B. Mure, Owen D. Pomery, Claire Scully, J. Webster Sharp, Rachael Smith, Lizzy Stewart, Lucy Sullivan, Zoe Thorogood, Donya Todd, Tillie Walden, and George Wylesol. But there’s so much more to the exhibition on top of that, and there are some other surprises included as well!
Hanging Tim Bird’s section
AO: Given all the amazing artists you’ve published over the years how difficult was the curation process for the exhibition? What kind of work were you looking to spotlight given the now vast AHP back catalogue?
CHAPMAN: Yes that was a really difficult part of it. We couldn’t hope to feature every creator we’ve worked with and still be able to do deep dives into the work. A lot of the decisions early on came down to looking for a balance between artists who work in traditional media and those who work digitally – we did want some original art on display! So we just picked work we felt was as varied as possible in terms of the medium, style, themes, approach etc.
AO: ‘Vision & Labour: Making Comics’ is more than just a display of artwork. It’s also about the whole process involved in comics creation. Can you give us some thoughts into what you were looking to communicate to visitors through that added element?
CHAPMAN: The artists have all given insights into their process for the exhibition, and there’s a video of extracts of everyone talking about their work that we’ve gathered from our podcast interviews over the years. So I think visitors will really get to understand the huge variety of work, creativity and passion that Avery Hill tries to be a home for. I’ve also personally put together some display cases and wall displays aimed at showing some of the behind-the-scenes process you don’t get to see when you hold a finished book in your hands. We hope to show visitors the huge amount of work that goes into both writing/drawing comics and also publishing them (that’s where the “labour” part of the title comes in!) For example, we have a huge flow-chart ‘The Journey of a Book’ illustrated by the amazing Kristyna Baczynski (who did lots of design/styling work on the show alongside the Mercer’s graphic designer). We hope that and other areas of the show will really illuminate all that goes into making our books.
AHP’s Autumn books line-up
AO: How important do you feel it is to get comics into spaces like galleries, and reaching non-traditional audiences that way?
CHAPMAN: I just think anything we can do to get people interested in the medium is really important. I think all indie comics creators and publishers in the UK wish more people would start reading comics, and we think there must be folks out there who love art, or love reading, who just don’t know that the kind of comics we make exist! I collaborated with the Comics Cultural Impact Collective on a leaflet that visitors can take away, which aims to give a broad overview of independent comics in the UK, and provide some next steps for newcomers who are inspired to dive in. Another large piece of artwork that Kristyna was commissioned to make aims to explain how comics and sequential art works. She did a brilliant job at explaining how to read comics if people don’t know, plus just explaining the magic of narrative art and what makes it special.
AO: What added insights will attendees get from the guided tours of ‘Vision & Labour’ across the Thought Bubble weekend?
CHAPMAN: Attendees will get to learn a lot about how Avery Hill came about and how we work, direct from some of the people who run the company and make books for us. We’ll talk through our love of comics and our thinking behind the exhibition content. Each tour will have two of the featured artists joining in, who’ll talk through their work in more detail and attendees will be able to ask all the questions!
AO: And, finally, it’s been another busy year for AHP. Tell us about some of the newer books you’ll have at Thought Bubble, and what can we expect from Avery Hill in 2026?
CHAPMAN: Yes this year has been busy and we’re gearing up for 2026 right now. At Thought Bubble you’ll be able to find a large number of AHP creators this year, but in terms of those with new books out – you’ll definitely want to find Donya Todd, Karenza Sparks, Sara Kenney and Rachael Smith/Paul Cornell. All of those folks have books that have only just come out this autumn – The Witch’s Egg, The Corus Wave, Acid Box and Who Killed Nessie? respectively! Our first 2026 book will be Was That Normal? (above) by Alex Potts – a longtime Avery Hill collaborator. The Kickstarter for this book has just launched, and if you fancy getting a special signed/sketched copy or a tote bag with yours, please jump on the campaign now and get your order in! We’re calling it a ‘beautifully observed graphic novel about connection, confusion, and the spaces in between.’
We also have books coming up by Olivia Sullivan, Pidge, and Jules Scheele. Jules is working on an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, and the pages I’ve seen so far are absolutely stunning. Looking further into the future, we have projects underway with Rebekka Dunlap, Darryl Cunningham, Dominica Claribelle, Sarah Ling, Ollie Hicks, Emma Oosterhous and many many more. Join our mailing list if you’d like to be kept up to date on these!
Interview by Andy Oliver
‘Vision & Labour: Making Comics – The Art of Avery Hill Publishing’ runs at the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate from October 18th, 2025 to April 26th, 2026.
Avery Hill Publishing will be at Table C8 in the Comixology Hall at Thought Bubble.
Thought Bubble 2025 runs from November 1oth-16th with the convention weekend taking place on the 15th-16th. More details on the Thought Bubble site here.
Read all our Thought Bubble 2025 coverage so far in one place here.
Poster by Ng Yin Shian
