The World of Tim Burton
The Design Museum, London, 2024

This major exhibition invites visitors into his world through an exploration of the design of his unique aesthetic. While most well-known for his cinematic work, this show displays the full extent of his production as an illustrator, painter, photographer and author, as well as exploring key collaborations with designers. As a multi-disciplinary artist, his creations extend beyond the limits of mediums and formats.

Drawn from Tim Burton’s personal archive and representing the artist’s creative output from childhood to the present day, this collection of drawings, paintings, photographs, sketchbooks, moving-image works, sculptural installations, set and costume design focuses on the recurrent visual themes and motifs found in the distinctive characters and worlds found in Burton’s art and films.

We worked with The Design Museum and Tim Burton and his team to develop the exhibition into five distinct sections. The first, Suburban Beginnings, charts his early years and creates a suburban street with forced perspective and timber framed houses with coloured mesh fabric reminiscent of the Edward Scissorhands street and Burbank where Tim grew up and features a recreation of his working studio including desk.

Next, Crafting Imagination shows his various influences and recurring themes form carnivals to horror films and presents  his early  stopmotion films including the maquettes displayed in bespoke timber showcases like packing crates and the backs of scenic flats. Film lighting fixtures add to the studio-like environment.

Building Worlds, presents his main feature films displayed in unique fabric ‘shadow box’ walls with internal lighting and silhouettes of the recognisable filmic worlds.

Drawing Imagination is a salon hang of various works and unrealised projects displayed in a twisting corridor reminiscent of the Beetlejuice afterworld.

The final section, Beyond Film, looks at his creativity beyond the realm of film and features a recreation of the Avalon Theatre - the cinema where he spent much of his teenage years .