RARE 1940s Hollywood artefacts have gone on display at Aberystwyth School of Art.

Recapturing Mighty Joe Young: The Movie! The Memory! The Make-Believe! is on there until 2 February.

Aberystwyth University School of Art lecturer Dr Harry Heuser has curated the exhibition featuring a unique album commemorating the production of the 1949 Hollywood fantasy movie Mighty Joe Young.

The brainchild of the creative team responsible for King Kong (1933), Mighty Joe Young earned an Academy Award for Special Effects.

The album contains over 100 stills from the film as well as documentarian photographs, drawings and watercolour paintings that provide insights into pre-CGI visual effects and the work of the celebrated stop motion animator Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013) in particular.

“The album has never been displayed before,” Dr Heuser points out. “Along with hundreds of books and journals, it was bequeathed to Aberystwyth University by the film historian Raymond Durgnat.

“I am keen to recover and display objects of visual culture that encourage us to explore connections between the arts as well as the creative industries and academic disciplines devoted to them.

“The Mighty Joe Young album tells stories of ingenuity and collaboration, of artistic influences and commercial enterprise.”