Category — UK cartoon events

A quick follow-up of stories we’ve covered recently on Bloghorn.

• The Forbidden Planet blog reports on Steve Bell in conversation with Martin Rowson, Gary Trudeau and Alan Moore at Edinburgh International Book Festival (previously).
• New Yorker cartoon editor (and cartoonist himself) Robert Mankoff responds to the recent Kanye West cartoon re-captioning internet phenomenon.
• downthetubes.net has the first review of CLiNT magazine (previously), whilst also informing us that Jonathan Ross and Mark Millar will be signing copies on Thursday 2nd September at 4.30pm at WH Smiths in London’s Victoria station.
• Posy Simmonds is interviewed in the Guardian about the upcoming Stephen Frears’ film adaptation of her graphic novel, Tamara Drewe, which opens in UK cinemas on 10th September (previously).

“Double Dip and Toil and Trouble !!” by Nick Hayes,
from the Guardian’s summer cartoonists showcase.

As previously mentioned in Bloghorn, the Guardian is showcasing six up-and-coming cartoonists whilst regular incumbent Steve Bell is on his summer holidays.

Since the last week of July, the cartoons of Anna Trench, Lou McKeever (aka Bluelou), Ben Jennings, Tanya Tier, Bob Moran and Nick Hayes have been adding their own visual takes on the day’s news. Their contributions haven’t been without controversy, with many cartoons receiving over 100 comments each, including numerous pieces or rebuttal from fellow Guardian cartoonist, Martin Rowson. As Martin says in the comments:

The reason for giving these cartoonists an airing here – including, of course, the opportunity to fail – is that these days it’s almost impossible to undergo that kind of baptism of fire in a national newspaper , and thus hone your native skills.

and on the subject of the comments:

[...] these six debutants have overturned an original editorial decision not to have comments on their work when it appears on this site. I think that’s quite brave of them, so it might be worthwhile some of you repaying the compliment by being constructive in your criticism, rather than just trolling about as usual, beating up this particular bus shelter on the side of the information superhighway with the kind of reckless abandon that seems to come so easily to the heroically anonymous.

On a related note, Steve Bell and Martin Rowson will be in conversation at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this weekend, whilst Steve will also be chatting to American political cartoonist Garry Trudeau and comic book writer Alan Moore.

Here at the Bloghorn we’re always ready to applaud when people do something different with cartoons and comics, and the exhibition Hypercomics, which is at the Pump House Gallery in Battersea, London, appears to do just that.

Subtitled The Shape of Comics to Come, it runs until September 26 and features work on four floors by Adam Dant, Dave McKean and Warren Pleece, above, and Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, below.

The show, we are told, “will explode the narratives in their work from the printed page into the gallery space and beyond”. We’re also told that it “uses the building’s unusual architecture to weave a story whose outcome depends upon how visitors interact and move through the space”.

If any of that sounds confusing, it probably indicates that the show should be experienced, rather than written about. And as the curator of the show is the comics expert Paul Gravett, who usually has his finger on the pulse, it’s sure to be nothing less than intriguing.

Accompanying the exhibition will be a programme of screenings, talks, workshops and events. The newly refurbished Pump House Gallery is in the rather marvellous Battersea Park, so make a day of it and take a picnic! For more information, visit the Pump House Gallery website.

The new issue of Foghorn, the cartoon magazine of the UK Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation, has been published. Featuring a cover by Steve Bright and a back cover by Gerard Whyman, Foghorn is available to subscribers for the modest annual sum of £30 for six full colour issues all delivered to your door.

What’s inside this issue?

Toyshops in my life – Clive Collins reveals how he never got the hang of wrapping up a fully inflated football.

A word to the wise – Chris Madden explains how simplified spelling is quite str8forward.

The Trevelyan Files – Foghorn’s very own rip-roaring adventurer continues his exploits, courtesy of Andrew Birch.

Buildings in the Fog – Roger Penwill dons his architectural trousers and heads to the nearest railway station.

The Potting Shed – Cathy Simpson keeps our resident gardening experts in check. Careful with that strimmer!

A full page of Rob Murray cartoons (described by Michael Heath,  cartoon editor at the Spectator magazine, as one of the “smart new kids on the block”.)

Strips from Wilbur, Andy Davey and The Surreal McCoy.

And of course the fun-packed filler features – The Critic, The Foghorn Guide to, Letters to the Editor, and a fair bucketload of cartoons!

Buy your own annual subscription here.

Uh-oh, it looks like Viz has finally achieved respectability in it’s home town, as this week sees the opening of an exhibition of original artwork from the adult comic at the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne (that’s Lit and Phil, for short).

The show, featuring the likes of the Fat Slags and Roger Mellie (the Man on the Telly), above, opens on Thursday, August 12, and runs until September 4. Opening times are Mon-Thurs 10am – 7pm, Friday 10am – 5pm, Saturday 10am – 1pm, and admission is £4, or £2 for members.

There is a series of talks and events to tie in with the exhibition. We particularly like the sound of co-founder Simon Donald’s “How to make yourself popular and successful using gutter language”.

More details at the Lit and Phil website.

Thanks to Pete Dredge for drawing our attention to this.

"You'd better release their ball. They've kidnapped the cat" by Norman Thelwell

The Chris Beetles Gallery in London has an exhibition of cat cartoons, illustrations and paintings opening later this month, titled Louis Wain and the Summer Cat Show 2010.

This show marks the 30th annual exhibition of British cat art at Chris Beetles. Alongside work by the eccentric Edwardian cat artist, Louis Wain, the exhibition features cartoons and sketches by William Heath Robinson, Norman Thelwell and Ronald Searle, although some of the paintings on show do remind Bloghorn of the infamous Viz commemorative plate The Life of Christ in Cats.

Louis Wain and the Summer Cat Show will be showing at the Chris Beetles Gallery, 8 & 10 Ryder St, St James’s, London, from August 14 to September 4, opening hours 10am – 5.30pm, Monday – Saturday. For more details go to www.chrisbeetles.com

We’ve seen elephants in London recently, and this weekend sees dragons taking to the streets of Newport. Cartoonists from the PCO are involved once again.

Sixty SuperDragons, as they are known, will make their debut in the South Wales city on Sunday (July 18). Cartoonists Tim Harries, above left, and Gerard Whyman, right, have spent much of the past two months putting colourful designs on a canvas that is somewhat different to a piece of A4 paper: a 5ft by 6ft fibreglass dragon.

Tim created a dragon called “Scrum”, covered in cartoon rugby players, and Ger created not one but two works: “Shipley”, based on the city’s maritime history (with famous Newportians past and present gazing from portholes) and “Rodney”, which was sponsored by Newport Gwent Dragons rugby team, and named after their Rodney Parade ground.

Detail from Shipley by Gerard Whyman

Ger told the Bloghorn that when work began at the end of April, he’d already had a useful experience: “The painting of a Big Board at the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival proved a useful dry run, as many artists were working in a communal space in a disused shop – renamed the Dragons’ Den for the duration – which was open to the public. So, as well as painting, I was fielding questions from interested visitors.

“I knew I was taking on a lot of work in painting two dragons and it felt a daunting prospect. The little A4 pencil sketches had to be transferred to a 5ft structure that had curves, contours and odd crevices – no mean feat! The satisfaction of completing them was immense. Now that the project is complete I feel slightly at a loss. It’s nice to have my freedom back but I miss the camaraderie of the fellow artists in the Dragons’ Den.”

Rodney by Gerard Whyman

Tim said: “I put a design together loosely based on the idea of Where’s Wally? I covered the dragon statue with cartoon rugby players and only one rugby ball, which the public would be encouraged to search for. It was much more time-consuming than I’d envisioned and occasionally frustrating (where’s the “undo” button? Aaagh!) It was a strain on the knees and I had a slight addiction to Sharpie pens due to overuse.

Detail from Scrum by Tim Harries

“The good points were working alongside lots of great local artists and illustrators, having a lot of fun actually painting and designing the dragon and seeing it finished, and getting a really good reaction from the public. Would I paint another one? Ask me again in six months when my knees have mended.”

The Launch of the SuperDragons Trail takes place at Newport’s Tredegar House on Sunday.

Royston Robertson reviews the Modern Toss exhibition which is at the Maverik Showroom in Shoreditch, East London, and has been extended until July 11.

In the spirit of Modern Toss, I should probably just say that this show is f***ing funny and leave it at that.

To be honest, there’s not much more than that you can say. For one thing, the mean-faced, foul-mouthed characters that populate the Toss cartoons almost deny you to make any deeper analysis. You’d risk looking like a pretentious chump (they wouldn’t say chump).

And for another, really what we have here is a lot of variations on the same gag. The joke goes like this: normal, upstanding member of society says one thing, and Modern Toss character replies with the kind of sweary abuse we all want to come out with in these situations but never do. It’s comedy Tourette’s (in fact, one of the characters takes that as his name).

There are a few pieces outside the usual formula, such as the brilliant Punctuation Networking Event, where punctuation marks chat about their traditional roles and how they’ve changes since texting and the internet, and the self-explanatory Periodic Table of Swearing.

Detail from Punctuation Networking Event

Good fun then, if a bit slight. The artwork on the walls is mainly prints which gives the whole thing a feeling of a shop rather than an exhibition. Still, it is marketed as a “Museum of Shit-Naks”, so as the Drive-By Abuser (pictured, top) might say, “Fair play to them, yeah?”

Cover for Martin Rowson's Tristram Shandy re-issue

Shy and retiring soul that he is, The Guardian’s own Martin Rowson would blanch at the thought that Bloghorn would puff his upcoming talk at the London Literature Festival on 3rd July, but we feel it’s our duty as he is a fellow PCO member.

The subject at hand is the reissue of his graphic-novelisation of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy – a monumental, rambling, discursive life of “gentleman” Shandy, first published in 1759 and often called the first “modern” novel. This promises to be fun, as Rowson himself was designed for the Rabelaisian environs of Georgian London in which the novel is set.

Martin is a veteran apologist for all things Georgian London, but primarily his heroes, Hogarth and Gillray. You can see the Hogarth advocate at work here in this short film. London is so ingrained in his DNA, that the Caligulan court of Red Ken bestowed the official title of London Cartoonist Laureate on him, before Boris installed some Victorian parsimony back into City Hall.

Rowson tells Bloghorn that the evening promises “an impossible talk about the impossibility of producing a graphic novelisation of a novel about the impossibility of writing a novel”. So there. His talks are always lively and interesting, although Bloghorn recommends not bringing one’s maiden aunt as the language can sometimes be somewhat, er, Georgian. Tickets can be purchased here.

“What the hell are you wrecking your room for? We own the hotel chain”

Royston Robertson reviews the exhibition Ray Lowry – London Calling which is at the Idea Generation Gallery in East London until July 4.

This show is being promoted largely with artworks created by well-known names as a tribute to the Clash’s London Calling sleeve – a masterful piece of graphic design by Ray Lowry who was the “official war artist” for the band at the time – but it is the work of Lowry himself that is the real heart of the show.

That work can be divided into several sections: his most familiar drawings – cartoons from Punch, Private Eye, NME and the like – often on music and pop culture; a collection of lesser-known artworks, including some abstracts, sketchbook drawings, and even some photography; and reportage drawings of The Clash on tour.

The cartoons are, of course, hilarious. They still work because the absurdities of the rock and roll lifestyle which Lowry pinpoints are still with us today (as indeed are the many of the rockers, though sadly Lowry himself is not). From a cartoonist’s point of view it’s amazing how small so many of them are. With those detailed, inky drawings, I assumed Ray was one of the big canvas guys.

But the standout of the show, for me, were the drawings of the Clash live. They are so coourful, spontaneous and vibrant that you can feel the excitement of the moment in them. They are full of movement, the rapidly moving sticks of drummer Topper Headon, in particular, are brilliantly rendered.

Some of the London Calling tributes are worth a look: there’s a great collage portrait of Lowry by the artist Ian Wright, and there’s a collage by Paul Simonon of The Clash which features a piece of the bass guitar which is smashed in the Pennie Smith photo on that iconic cover. The others are a mixed bag, some not so successful.

In this show Lowry is really a tribute to himself: the rock and roll cartoonist. Go and see this encore.