Claymation has been around since the invention of pottery in about 10,000 BCE. However, the art form has evolved greatly over the past few decades.
Learn more at Clayography in Motion: Adam Elliot’s Memoir of a Snail, which is on display at the Museum of the Moving Image from Friday, Dec. 20, through Sunday, March 30, 2025.
The exhibition celebrates the 2024 stop-motion animation Memoir of a Snail, which was recently nominated for a Golden Globe and a Critics Choice Award for Best Animated Feature. (Elliot also has an Academy Award for Best Short Film.) It features a variety of the handmade puppets that starred in the movie alongside excerpts, 2-D characters, and sets where visitors can create their own stop-motion animations.
Access to all MoMI galleries, including special exhibitions, runs from $10 to $20.
Elliot will be at MoMI to present a related screening series, featuring Memoir of a Snail, his 2009 feature Mary and Max, and five shorts, including his Oscar-winning Harvie Krumpet (2004), on Jan. 3 and Jan. 4.
Memoir of a Snail follows Grace Pudel (in the voice of Sarah Snook), an outsider finding her confidence as she grows up in Australia in the 1970s. Earlier this year, it premiered at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, where it won a Cristal Award for a Feature Film.
Grace loses both parents, spends time in a foster home, and loses touch with her twin brother during her youth, but somehow manages to remain positive. After many ups and downs, she finds stability, and at the end, she creates a stop-motion film and reunites with her brother.
Elliot says he uses clay puppets to explore themes inspired by his own life. He coined the term “Clayography” to describe his merger of clay animation and biography.
Clayography in Motion is in the animation section of MoMI’s Behind the Screen exhibit. The venue is at 36-01 35th Ave. in Astoria’s Kaufman Arts District.
Image: Courtesy of IFC Films