“Eat your heart out Madonna.”
Anna Crichton, one of New Zealand’s top cartoonists, will be showing an exciting and sometimes provocative selection of her originals and published work at the Kāwhia Old Post Office gallery next month.
Anna has enhanced both New Zealand and overseas publications with her sharply drawn cartoons, caricatures and illustrations over many years.
An illustrator and art director in the print media industry since the 1980s, Anna established an international reputation when she contributed regularly to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time magazine and The Australian.
In Aotearoa, she contributed on a regular basis to the New Zealand Herald, The Listener, Cuisine, Metro and more.
Her work has been collected by the New Zealand Alexander Turnbull Library Cartoon Archives and she is a five-time winner, and five-time finalist, of the NZ/Qantas/Canon/Voyager Media award for Best Editorial Artist.
Anna illustrates social commentary with a satirical edge using an old-fashioned dip pen, ink and brush.
Her work has been described as abstract and humorous, full of pictorial puns and metaphors that draw the reader into accompanying articles.
Anna said there was a mental gymnastics process to responding to an article, whether in the business, politics, food or book review pages of a publication.
Visitors to her exhibition would have the opportunity to learn about this process, and be entertained and enthralled by some of her most memorable published works.
There will also be quality $20 A3 fine art reproductions of her work for sale at the gallery.
Everyone has been invited to the opening of Wayward Works – A Cartoon Exhibition on Friday, June 2, from 5.30pm-7.30pm.
Waitakere Art Gallery director Andrew Clifford said the exhibition’s process-based approach was especially useful for education programmes, and provided good opportunities for public programmes, which ranged from basic portrait drawing to cartoon workshops to general consideration of the forms drawings can take and how they can relate to current events.
He said the exhibition also served as a de facto history of recent topical moments.
Intermediate and high school students had found the exhibition entertaining and engaging, and asked lots of questions in talks given by Anna.
“The exhibition provided an opportunity to showcase a wider range of artform, extending from the visual arts and drawing into design and illustration as specific genres of creative practice.
“It was popular with visitors, many of whom recognised the drawings or the subjects, and enjoyed the humour,” he said.
