From Coal Queens to Comedy Kings: The Sculptures of Graham Ibbeson opens at the National Coal Mining Museum England. Featuring sculptures of Laurel and Hardy, and Ken Dodd among a few, Graham talks about his family of sculptures.
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00:00Hi, my name's Graham Ibbotson, I'm a sculptor, and this is my exhibition here at the National
00:07Coal Mining Museum, from Coal Queens to Coal Mining Kings. It's a bit of a strange one
00:15because all the Coal Mining Kings are related to coal mining anyway. So we've got Ken Dodd,
00:21whose father was a coal merchant and he helped out, Eric Morkham who was a bevving boy, and
00:28Stan Laurel who appeared in the Miner film with Oliver Hardy. So we have nine pieces
00:40all told, ten actually, because we've got the old Kelenly memorial that's been re-sited
00:49here when Kelenly closed in 2015. So it's put here, so there's ten of my pieces here.
00:57And it's a cross-section of the work. We've also got four, I think it's ten prints in
01:07the cafe area. And it really is a cross-section of my own work, and commission work, and some
01:15of the original fibreglass work that I did for commissions that were sent down to the
01:20Foundry. So these, the Eric Morkham is the original Eric Morkham that I modelled in Barnsley,
01:26and that was turned to the Foundry. So the important pieces to me, the important pieces
01:33are part of my career. So I'm really chuffed that in the National Coal Mining Museum, my
01:42mining history goes back 180 years in Barnsley, so I feel very much at home here, and my work
01:50feels very much at home. And I see most of my sculptures as part of my family, so it
01:58is a full circle at the National Coal Mining Museum. It opens on the 18th of January.