Harrogate’s Mercer Art Gallery has teamed up with indie publisher Avery Hill Publishing to create an exhibition showcasing some of today’s most exciting comics creators. Opening in time for this year’s Thought Bubble Comic Art Festival, the exhibition offers a fascinating glimpse into the work of leading comic artists, and an important snapshot of the UK comics landscape over the past decade.

From the early superhero comics of the 1930s underground comix scenes of the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, to the rise of manga and Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize winning Maus in the ‘90s, generations have grown up reading comics. It is a medium that inspires diverse groups of people to a life-long love of reading, and has filtered into education, health, public art, video games, movies, and many more parts of life today.

Comics writers and artists work in a wide variety of ways, from solo creators who write and draw their own books, to collaborations between several creators. Comics can be short, accessible stories of just 30 pages, or lengthy graphic novels, hundreds of pages long. It is a medium with something for everyone—literary fiction, memoir, non-fiction, sci-fi, horror, and more. As it grows, so does its recognition, with graphic novels winning prestigious awards and being adapted to film and TV.

This exhibition is an exciting way for us to extend our remit of helping new creators into comics and a great chance for us to look back on what we’ve created over the years. Somehow we’ve achieved this despite having no publishing experience, juggling demanding day jobs and major life-changes, in what was supposed to be a fun side-project that accidentally got out of control.

On display in the exhibition are original artworks by sixteen diverse artists, shown alongside the finished books. The exhibition shows insights into the creative process of making comics, and the different working practices of each artist, ranging from meticulous ink drawings to spectacular digitally created imagery, including video footage of the creators at work.

Vision & Labour: Making Comics: The Art Of Avery Hill Publishing is at the Mercer Gallery in Harrogate until 18 October 2025 to 26 April 2026.

The gallery is hosting two 'meet the artists' sessions:

Saturday 15 November 11.30am
Led by Kat Chapman of Avery Hill Publishing, joined by artists Tom Humberstone and B. Mure
Sunday 16 November 2pm

Led by Andy Oliver of Broken Frontier, joined by artists Tim Bird and Donya Todd.