Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting small exhibition at the Cartoon Museum looking at the work of Nigerian comic creator Oluwasegun Babatunde. The show explained how Babatunde developed the idea for a superhero universe set in Nigeria during lockdown after struggling to find any characters in comics which reflected his West African background. It showed some of the comics and books set among the Towncriers of Motherland and a fictitious land of Naijaland. It also discussed how he found an illustrator in lockdown, Daniel Egharevba and how they worked together in those circumstances.   Closes 21 January 2024

Fun exhibition at the Cartoon Museum celebrating 30 years since the release of the animation “Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers”. The show outlined how the film was made with a large collection of the original concept drawings and story boards. There was a fascinating section, with a video, looking at how the train scene came about and was executed. Even today people were standing and laughing at it. There was also a selection of figures and props from the sets as well as a display of merchandise from the time of its release. Closes 16 April 2024    

Disappointing small exhibition at the Cartoon Museum on the comic strips based on the animations of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson like Thunderbirds and Stingray. I say disappointing as a lot of the work on show were homages to the earlier comic. I would like to have seen more from the early work. Similarly there was one model from a tv show but the toys in a display case were modern ones. I think this was one for the geeks rather than a vaguely interested passer-by like me. Closes 4 June 2023  

Frightening  exhibition at the Cartoon Museum of satire and cartoons of Boris Johnson and events in the UK from 2019-2022. I say frightening because, although I laughed out loud a lot in the show, the fact we actually lived through these events and live with the consequences now is frightening. The section of Covid was the most funny and poignant. The whole show was slightly dominated by the sound from an animated cartoon of Boris’s “I don’t wash my hands speech” in which he gradually turns into a skeleton. I’ve added a couple of my favourites here. The show also covered Ukraine, Brexit and his fall from office. There were examples from all the main cartoonists and newspapers and most were shown in the original drawings. It was nice to see that a lot of the work had been donated to the museum. Closes 16 April 2023  

Interesting exhibition at the Cartoon Museum looking at the evolution of the Judge Dredd character. OK I admit I come to this with zero knowledge but, you know me, I’ll give anything a go! Evidently the character has been going for 45 years and as artwork and technology has evolved so has how he has been shown. The display looked at how eight artists had depicted him. There was a rich variety of images and they were explained well. The one I show is by Tom Foster from 2016 for a film. The show included three steps in the developing the image, a photo of a friend posing, a digital recreation with added elements and this final finished image. I loved a funny video about a day in the life of the current artist, sorry I forgot to note their name, and I did laugh out loud at it’s dry humour. Closes 24 April 2022  

Fun exhibition at the Cartoon Museum investigating the psychology behind cartoon humour This mass public experiment led by Robert Dunbar, Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Oxford, took the form of pairs of cartoons from which you were invited to pick the one you found funniest and record this on a questionnaire. I had recently done a talk on humour in art at which the curator of this show spoke so I was interested to see how it worked in practice. If nothing else it was a chance to see some interesting examples from their collection and I have registered to see the results when they are released. It was hard to know from the combinations what factors were being investigated so it will be fascinating to see the results. I had not visited the museum since it moved and I must say it is looking good in its new venue. There seems to be more room for the permanent collection which was set out well. There was a friendly welcome which was appreciated. Closes 5 ...

Interesting exhibition at the Cartoon Museum looking at the work of the 18th century satirist, James Gillray and the influence he has had on subsequent generations. It was useful to see this so soon after the show at the Queen’s Gallery on Thomas Rowlandson as they covered roughly the same period. I must admit I preferred Rowlandson as I found Gillray crueller but I think that is the difference between a cartoonist and a satirist. This exhibition was however quite different in that it mainly looked at Gillray’s influence so there were lots of examples of where modern satirists such as Steve Bell quoted and reused earlier images by Gillray. The main example used was the Plum Pudding in Danger which Gillary had used to show Pitt and Napoleon carving up Europe in the guise of a big pudding. Later examples showed Johnson and Kosygin, Blair and Kohl, Blair and Chirac, Cameron and Sarkozy and many more! It just shows that nothing changes! I hadn’t realised that Gilray inven...

Interesting exhibition at the Cartoon Museum looking at gekiga, an alternative manga from Japan. I had no idea what this was when I went to it, but you know me, I’ll go and see anything. I found the social side of this fascinating. In the post war period in Japan there was a demand for all sorts of entertainment but manga cartoons were seen as juvenile so gekiga grew up as a more adult form created by the children of the war years. Originally people couldn’t afford to buy the books so they were rented. I preferred the early sparser images many of which were very similar to the earlier Japanese print style.   I liked “The Story of the West” with a smoking cowboy. I found some of the later images a bit confused and fussy.

Nice exhibition at the Cartoon Museum looking at how Hogarth depicted London in his prints and etchings. I liked the way the exhibit was arranged geographically around the city so it almost took you on a walk of Georgian London. It pointed out that this was a time when the city was going through a transformation with a lot of property development and financial speculation. The commentaries on the pictures were great and really explained them but they were a bit too long and slowed up some people’s viewing. It was nice to see some of the great sets of prints again and there was a small set looking at cruelty to animals which I had not seen before. In the set a boy goes from kicking a dog, to being a carter who beats his horse, to becoming a highway man to being executed and dissected. The moto is don’t kick dogs! I also liked the Industry and Idleness series which contrasted a good and a bad apprentice. One goes to church the other watches a play in the graveyard. ...

Novel exhibition at the Cartoon Museum of new work by 12 leading contemporary cartoonists responding to the global events leading up to the start of the First World War. I liked the range of events which were represented from the suffragette’s the situation in Ireland and the fact this was the year Ghandi left South African to move back to India. A really novel idea created in conjunction with the Radio 4 programme of the same name.

Interesting exhibition at the Cartoon Museum telling the story of the First World War through cartoons of the time and since. Some of the most memorable images of the war were the cartoons and even the famous Kitchener post began life as the cover of a magazine.   Cartoons had a major propaganda role. Some of the images also became icons of the time with Bruce Bairnsfather’s “Old Bill” becoming the face of the Tommy. I liked the fat they included trench journals such as the Wiper’s Times as well as some journals which only had one or two issues. I also liked the inclusion of comic postcards as they were the works being bought by the troops and their families. I wasn’t so sure of mixing in pictures from the Horrible History book on the First World War. It was a nice idea and made it more accessible to children but in quite a small cramped exhibition it would have been nicer to keep it cotemporary to the time.