BONSAI'S BIG EXHIBITION aka May The Toys Be With You

Bonsai_Tree_Ent

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This is a rather special announcement from me, I am really pleased to be curating a vintage Star Wars exhibition!
The exhibition is called 'May The Toys Be With You' (I tried to go with Bonsai's Big Exhibition but they weren't having it… :D ) and will feature both the vintage toy line and vintage Star Wars posters, along with a few other nice surprises and fun things for children and family visitors.

It is running from 5th December to 6th March at The Beaney House of Art and Knowledge in the lovely city of Canterbury. The venue is beautiful, it had a recent £14m refit and you couldn't ask for a nicer place to display a collection in. The staff at the Beaney have also been so enthusiastic and I know they will put on a great exhibition, they have displayed Manet's before in there so this is quite a coup to have the gallery given over to Star Wars – they are hoping for record visitor numbers!

The exhibition is free to enter and I might add that I'm donating my collection for free also, so I do hope the vintage community will support it – help spread the word and do come along, be great to see some of the SWFUK boys there!
 

SAVORY100

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I'll be there! Might be worth getting a few dates up so a group can get there on the same day(s) an make a bit of an SWF.UK thing of it...

Is it just your collection or have you coerced others to share parts of their collection too?
How many (roughly) items do you expect to have on show?
 

SublevelStudios

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Great stuff, looks really interesting. Good luck with it and will enjoy looking at the pics once the show is up and running.
 

Bonsai_Tree_Ent

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SAVORY100 said:
I'll be there! Might be worth getting a few dates up so a group can get there on the same day(s) an make a bit of an SWF.UK thing of it...

Is it just your collection or have you coerced others to share parts of their collection too?
How many (roughly) items do you expect to have on show?

Cheers mate! Canterbury is a good day out for anyone, great pubs and restaurants - come for the vintage, stay for the beer!

The aim will be to tell the story of the vintage toy line from Early Bird through to Kenners folder presentation to Lucasfilm when the line was ended. There will be lots of nostalgia for general 'public' family audiences but hopefully also a good amount of rare and high end items on show for hardcore collectors to enjoy. There will be some additional exhibits not from my own collection, and I think it's going to be a great showcase that will hopefully be seen by many 1000's and bring more people into our hobby.
 

Bonsai_Tree_Ent

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I recorded an interview today with 'multimedia artist' Sam Vale, which is planned to be part of the May The Toys Be With You exhibition (a looped video in the gallery).

Was asked many probing questions about Star Wars and why I collect, including a curve ball which momentarily stumped me "What's your earliest memory?"...

Anyway, Sam seems to have a unique take on the world so I will be intrigued to see the result...
 

Bonsai_Tree_Ent

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Like Yoda says... Exhibition is opening in a fortnight in Canterbury. Running from Dec 5th to March 6th, hope you boys might make it down!
 

SAVORY100

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Visiting Canterbury today for work and took my lunch hour visiting this amazing exhibit.
A really smart set-up, this is not in any way a rushed or slapped together village hall event, it's a proper job, professional exhibition on a large gallery/museum scale.
Matt should probably pop a few more photos up or at least an overview of the room image as I think if you guys saw it you'd make the effort to travel a serious distance to see and support it, certainly beat all my expectations.
Some lovely items from all films posters wise on a couple of walls as well as a massive display of vintage toy ranges and some epic custom pieces creating the unmade toys, including an epic Bantha!!! Great section on repro and how harmful it is too.
To top it all, there's even a museum shop full of general Star Wars related Merch and books, exhibition exclusive postcards and... Wait for it... Loose minty vintage figures! :shock:

Well done Matt, a truly superb exhibition!
 

lejackal

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SAVORY100 said:
To top it all, there's even a museum shop full of general Star Wars related Merch and books, exhibition exclusive postcards and... Wait for it... Loose minty vintage figures! :shock:
!
I hope you left some for the rest of us! :D
 

Gematria

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Feb 6, 2016
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Hello all. My first post here :)

Just to say that today I visited the exhibition with my wife & son, and we all really enjoyed it. It's a fantastic collection that's displayed superbly. The whole space was really well thought out, and the corner with the drawing materials/costumes was great to keep our son amused once we'd been there for a while. As someone who has a fairly large collection of cinema posters, it was really great to see all those UK quads and read the interesting text that accompanied each of them. Oh, and Peter Cushing's slippers were great, too!

I also enjoyed the film show, and really liked the bit about how the toys really kept things going when we were away from the films - I have really strong memories of how the toys helped bridge the gaps between '77, '80 and '83.

Anyway, just to say thanks for sharing your great collection, Bonsai; the three of us are tempted to make a return visit before the exhibition ends in March!
 
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