Over 7 decades, Steadman has collaborated with writers and poets on scores of children’s books as well as writing and illustrating his own. The exhibition gives the viewer the opportunity to view a selection of these and witness first hand the changing and developing style of the artist over the course of a lifetime of work. The pieces are charming and whimsical and demonstrate Steadman’s energetic and joyous approach to his work and his love of the ridiculous and childlike sense of wonder and flights of the imagination.

For over a decade, Steadman has been collaborating with filmmaker and conservationist, Ceri Levy. The Gonzovation collection, which now numbers over 300 original  artworks, began in 2011 when Levy approached Steadman, a childhood hero, to produce one artwork of an extinct bird, for a planned exhibition, Ghost of Gone Birds, to highlight the loss of so many species of our feathered friends. Steadman found that once he had started drawing the lost birds, he could not stop and eventually created over 100 which would become the first book in the Gonzovation Trilogy. Nextinction, about critically endangered birds and then Critical Critters about endangered animals followed. What is presented in the exhibition is a fraction of the full collection and is full of colour and vitality.