New Statesman designer and illustrator Dan Murrell’s work to be shown at a new exhibition

The Swan House Gallery in Harwich will showcase the designer’s work with long-time collaborator Hugh Tisdale.

New Statesman designer and illustrator Dan Murrell will see his work showcased in a new exhibition at the Swan House Gallery in Harwich this month. The first joint exhibition with his long-time collaborator Hugh Tisdale, ‘Tisdale & Murrell’ will display prints from the last two decades.

Dan Murrell has worked at the New Statesman for over 20 years.

Murrell’s ‘Peter Cook’

Former editor Peter Wilby said:

This is the first joint exhibition of prints by Hugh Tisdale and Dan Murrell whose work I have known and admired for 20 years.

Dan met Hugh when he worked on the New Statesman as a freelance designer in the mid-1990s. Dan studied at Ipswich College of Art and Bath Academy of Art. When I first joined the magazine, as literary editor, he was the man to whom one turned for help when grappling with the somewhat temperamental computers. But I soon learned that there was more to him than that. When I became editor in 1998, I struggled to get arresting covers that could sell the magazine on newsstands. Various ideas were tried and failed. All along, the answer was in the office, right under my nose. Dan’s brilliant illustrative skills, initially in collaboration with art editor David Gibbons, and later under the guidance of the former Sunday Times Magazine design supremo Michael Rand, came to the fore and took our covers to new levels of sophistication and daring.

Dan and Hugh founded Owlgate, a publishing company, in 1999, at first to produce graphic histories of football clubs, later to publish their prints. Their joint efforts are far too little known to the wider public. I hope this exhibition gives them a wider audience.

Murrell’s Ey, Wayne!