Artists and Cartoonists in Black and White

23 January-14 March 1999

Artists  and Cartoonists in Black & White  (the most public art) celebrates Australian cartoons and the people who have designed them. It featured original convict broadsheets, ‘golden age’ gags, illustrated ephemera, editorial cartoons, underground comics and Indigenous satires.

Honoring the lives of our famous black-and-white artists, it documents their survival, and occasional prosperity. Juxtaposing their journeyman deadlines with the artist’s glamorous opening nights, it acknowledges those artists who have bridged the gap between ‘high’ and ‘low’ image making. It also features fine art prints and mainstream cartoons which focus on similar subjects and work in similar styles.

These funny, sometimes bitter-sweet drawings and savage art works expose the expectations we often place on these artists – and their expectations of us.

Sometimes dashed off, sometimes published as limited edition prints, all these works blur truth and lies. Some of them were published in our most famous papers and magazines. Others come from self-published collections.

The exhibition features such cartooning immortals as S.T. Gill, Tommy McCrae, Phil May, Hop (Livingston Hopkins), Will Dyson, Joan Morrison, Stan Cross, Noel Counihan, Jolliffe, George Molnar and Kevin Gilbert. It also displays the work of Jenny Coopes, Danny Eastwood, Gordon Hookey, Bruce Petty and Cathy Wilcox and other leading contemporary artists.

Most of the works are from the State Library of NSW’s renowned but rarely seen cartoon collection of 40,000 original works.

Held in conjunction with the State Library of New South Wales, the exhibition drew on the Library’s vast holdings especially the Bulletin’s archive in the Mitchell Library.

Artists: E.S. (Nea) Addrems, Joyce Allen, Rick Amor, John Arthur Andrews, George Aria, George Rossi Ashton, Michael Atchison, Louisa Atkinson, Thomas Balcombe, Glen Baxter, Valerie Beckhouse, Frank Benier, John Bice,  Sid Black, Arthur Sharland Boothroyd, Warren Brown, Bertha Bennet Burleigh, Ian Burn, Grace Burns, Larry Burns, Nutter Buzacott, Jane Cafarella, Samuel Calvert, Gaynor Cardew, John Carmichael, Rod Clement, Ted Colles, Aubrey Collette, Patrick Cook, Kaz Cooke, Jenny Coopes, Dorothy Cottrell, Reginald Walter Coulter, Noel Counihan, Thomas Selby Cousins, Victoria Cowdroy, Stan Cross, Fred Cullen, Jean Cullen, Salvador Dali, Asa Dane, Honore Daumier, Willian Dobel, Will Donald, George Donaldson, Russell Drysdale, John Dunn, Frank Dunne, Tom Durkin, William Henry Dyson, Danny Eastwood, Heiner Egersdorfer, George F. Emmons, John Endean, W.T. Falconer, William Fernyhough, George Finey, Amadeus Julius Fischer, Michael Fitzjames, James Flett, A.R. Fluke, Kendall Foreman, George Frankland, Annie Franklin, Leslie Franks, John Frith, Harry Garlick, May Gibbs, Jack Gibson, Kevin Gilbert, Samuel Thomas Gill, W. Gil, William Goodwin, Louise Graber, Reg Graham, Alex Gurney, Charlie Hallett, Peter Harrigan, Rolf Harris, Cecil hart, Vernon Hayles, Newton Hedstrom, Rolf Heimann, Bernard Hesling, Norman Hetherington, Heinrich Hinze, Livingstone Hopkins, Judy Horacek, Arthur Horner, Mollie Horseman, Michael Nelson Jagamara,  Frank Jessup, Pamela Hohnston, Eric Jolliffe, Joe Jonsson, Jukes, Harry Julius, Fatima Kantilla, Darren Kemp, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Mark Knight, Frank Koch, Hotti Lahm, Alec Laing, George Lambert, Sean Leahy, Bill Leak, Percy Leason, Fred Leist, Donna Leslie, Michael Leunig, Vivienne Shark Lewitt, Ruby Lind, Vane Lindesay, Lionel Lindsay, Norman Lindsay, Percy Lindsay, Ruby Lindsay, Geoff Lichfield, Margaret Little, David Low, Joe Lynch, Herbert McClintock, Hugh McCrae, Mahdi McCrae, Stuart McCrae, Fiona MacDonald, Val Mack, Pantjiti Mary Mclean, Frank McLeod, Wiliam Macleod, Tommy McRae, Frank Mahony, Claude Marquet, Matthew Martin, Phil May, Emile Mercier, Syd Miller, Benjamin Edwin Minns, Hal Missingham, Herbert W. Moffitt, Alan Moir, George Molnar, Sally Morgan, Joan Morrison Albert Namatjira, William Nicholas, Peter Harvey Nicholson, Noonie, Charles Nuttal, Pat Oliphant, Lin Onus, Adrienne Parkes, Better Paterson, Esther Paterson, Dorothy Ellsmore Paul, Mick Paul, J.A. Pearce, Marjory Penglase, Cecil Humphrey Percival, Bruce Petty, Pablo Picasso, Larry Pickering, Michael Pickering, Walter Edwin Pidgeon, Jackson Pollock, David (Heinrich Hinze) Pope, Geoff Pryor, Oswald Pryor, Virgil Reilly, Maggie Renvoise, Norman Rice, Norman Rockwell, Charles Rodius, Will Rushton, Reg Russom, Gerard Scifo, Ted Scorfield, Andreas Serrano, Martin Sharp, Garry Shead, Alice Solly, David Henry Souter, Percy Spence, John Spooner, Les Such, David Swain, Gordon Syron, Ron Tandberg, Les Tanner, Eric Thake, Ray Thomas, Theo Tremblay, Geoffrey Turton, Peter Tundall, Jorn Utzon, Vanessa, Alf Vincent, Edith Wall, Cecil John White, Cathy Wilcox, John Wright, Blamire Young, Paul Zanetti

Curators: Joan Kerr, Craig Judd, Jo Holder

Catalogue: Artists and cartoonists in black and white : the most public art  by Joan Kerr 9780958719247