Judy Horacek is a cartoonist well known for her work dealing with feminism, the environment, social justice, peace and unrequited love. An exhibition of her past and recent productions will be held from September 16 to 29 as part of Melbourne's Fringe Festival. JEREMY SMITH and PHILIPPA WATT interviewed her for Green Left Weekly.
Tell us something about the exhibition itself.
It's my first solo in Melbourne and the first time that I have organised a solo exhibition of my own work. Some of it is work that I have done for the exhibition and other is stuff that hasn't been published. The material goes back around three years, but most of it is fairly recent.
There are a few originals from the Unrequited Love series. It's more a trade fair really, a desperate grasp to try to get enough money to live on for the next month.
Is it necessary to set up your own exhibitions to support yourself?
I don't know. Because I'm a fringe artist I suppose I've always done things for myself and organised group exhibitions. So it is very much part of getting your work out there. As far as cartoons go, they certainly don't fall into the mainstream, fine art, sort of thing. You'd find it hard to get a commercial gallery to represent you I think.
It's nice to organise your own exhibition because you are in control of what you want to put up. You make your own deadlines, and things like that.
Is it hard to have things published in the mainstream?
Having just tried for a couple of months to send stuff off to the mainstream, and I was just sending stuff off all the time, I can tell you few ever replied. They're rude bastards. If they said to me, "Well, look, you're too political" or "We don't like your stuff" or something, well fine. But they don't say anything at all or they say "We like you but we can't use you".
The Age says, "We like you but we've got Kaz Cooke, and we can't have two". What do they mean "two" — two what? Two women?
Your cartooning is a very particular brand. Do you think that's why the media hang back from it?
I don't know if it's that so much as that there's few spaces for cartoonists. I'd love it if they'd say, "We're not going to publish you because you're a feminist". That would be great because I could just get a warm glow in my poverty.
Many people may ask "How does feminism help you as a cartoonist?". Let's turn that around and ask how does cartooning help you as a feminist?
It helps me to be active; it's a very concrete thing that I can do, that I feel is making some sort of contribution. It's nice to feel as though you're doing something towards the causes of social change and making people think and getting different ideas out there.
Feminism provides a wealth of material, but patriarchy is a bigger source of humour. What I do, in particular, is to depict women's experience as real experience, which adds a different slant to it. Men can understand the material, especially in Life on the Edge, but women just look at it and say "Yes!".
Men can look at the cartoons and laugh. However, if you're a woman, you can laugh at the humour but also know that you've been there so many times.
Have you always drawn?
I have always drawn and written, but I didn't actually start doing cartoons until I was 25. As soon as i started doing them, I thought that this was what I wanted to do.
I was involved in a writing group, and the person running the group suggested that we all do pictures to go with the stories. That was the start. Then I went around trying to get work. In the absence of any huge career having appeared and wondering what I was going to do with my life, I decided to draw.
[Judy Horacek's exhibition is on at the Brunswick Mechanics Institute, cnr Sydney and Glenlyon Roads, Brunswick (Melbourne), September 16-29.]