Art and About: Charlotte Trounce travels through time with the National Art Pass

While the art of time travel hasn’t been properly mastered yet, there is a way to turn back the clock by taking a trip to the multitude of galleries and museums across the UK that house a rich history of works of art and objects. We commissioned illustrator Charlotte Trounce to do just that in partnership with the Art Fund, to celebrate the National Art Pass. The pass provides free entry to over 240 museums, galleries and historic houses across the UK, as well as 50% off entry to major exhibitions.

Charlotte has created a series of playful and unexpected illustrations that give just a glimpse into the years, decades and centuries that can be journeyed through when visiting some of the country’s institutions. The illustrator’s creations see her fuse together a series of characters made up of a number of drawings she’s made during her visits. “It was fun cutting up works of art from different periods of time and collaging them together to create a new image – like a strange historical mishmash!” Charlotte says. The series is like an elaborate game of exquisite corpse as various statues, paintings, fabric swatches and fragments of ceramics are pieced together in layers creating a condensed lesson in art history.

For the previous two briefs, Charlotte has catalogued the vast number of exhibits available to us and the breadth of architecture on show, but here the illustrator had to convey the less tangible concept of time travel. “It’s definitely been more challenging,” says Charlotte. “For this brief, it was less about me just drawing what I was seeing and more about me as an artist – I needed to use my imagination this time!” Charlotte didn’t feel like she had to adapt her loose drawing style too much as the age of each object informed the details of her drawings naturally. What did shift was her approach to the process: “As I was working on this brief, I was more aware of the kinds of works of art or objects I needed to be drawing, because I already had an idea of what I was going to create. So, at times, I found that I was restricting myself, compared to when I first started the project and was drawing anything I was interested in.”

Charlotte was keen to capture the contrast between old and new, and visited a range of places including: the British Museum’s Sunken Cities: Egypt’s Lost Worlds exhibit; Picasso Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery; Tate Britain’s Turner Prize 2016 show and its permanent collection; Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts; the Barbican Art Gallery’s The Vulgar: Fashioned Redefined show and the Museum of London. This variety has allowed distinct comparisons between each of the collaged elements, but it also conjured some unexpected parallels. “On my visits I thought a lot about how something incredibly old could actually look really modern. For example, at the Sainsbury Centre of Visual Arts in Norfolk, I found a vase that was from 3600–2800 BC. It was in perfect condition and appeared contemporary,” she explains.

One of the key parts of the project for Charlotte was to draw works of art across as big a timeline as possible and she thinks she’s travelled “all the way from 267 BC to today”. After creating lots of drawings of exhibits throughout history, Charlotte began to chop them up to make these mix and match characters. “I looked for heads, chests and legs from different drawings and worked out how I could fit them together to highlight the contrast between the time periods,” she explains. “I like the contrast of the black line drawings and the coloured sketches and I think that definitely helps to break them up.”

The wealth of objects and works of art available for Charlotte to draw is testament to the museums and galleries she visited for the brief. “The Sainsbury Centre had a great collection that spanned a huge period of time from Mexican sculptures from 600–900 BC, to more contemporary ceramics collections. At Tate Britain I loved the Henry Moore rooms with sculptures from the 50s and the Turner Prize show was perfect for drawing some of the most contemporary works by the likes of Anthea Hamilton and Helen Marten.”

Charlotte adds: “I also visited the The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined exhibition at the Barbican, displaying fashion ranging from the 18th Century to early this year. And at the National Portrait Gallery, I visited Picasso’s Portraits where I drew artworks that spanned the whole of his career, it was great to see the development of his work and the stylistic changes over the decades.”

Using the pass allowed Charlotte to flit easily between historical art movements and ancient times, and it was an eye-opening experience for the illustrator. “Throughout this entire project I’ve been constantly amazed and overwhelmed by not only the scale of how much there is to see, but particularly by the age of many of the works of art,” says Charlotte. “Time travel is possible with a National Art Pass!”

A National Art Pass offers 50% off major exhibitions, plus free entry to hundreds of museums, galleries and historic places across the UK. The really good bit? Funds raised through the pass allow the Art Fund to help museums and galleries buy important works of art for everyone to enjoy. Learn more about the National Art Pass “here”: and use the offer code ITSNICETHAT to receive a free limited edition print by Charlotte Trounce with your purchase of the National Art Pass.