Design and Art Australia Online

'comic artist, illustrator and political cartoonist’ (according to National Museum of Australia’s 2001 website), works in Melbourne as a freelance often producing comics and cartoons for government institutions and community groups. Influenced by American feminist cartoonists, she mainly drew cartoons for anarchist publications in 1985-89.

In 1991 Waite participated in Out of Line , an exhibition by feminist cartoonists Jane Cafarella , Trudy Clutterbuck (sp?), Kaz Cooke , Bronwyn Halls, Judy Horacek , Deborah Kelly , Kathleen McCann, Nicole McKinnon and Joan Rosser. The catalogue includes a short, tongue-in-cheek biography:

“Jo Waite first turned to cartooning to assuage the pain of being crossed in love. (Before that she had mainly drawn libraries and trees.) Her training in Art includes adult courses in film criticism and therapeutic massage, and graphic art (one year), which she failed. Born in 1964, the years until 1985 were full of childhood, adolescence and then too many drugs to remember. From 1985 to 1989 between demonstrations and arrests she drew for anarchist magazines, depicting the complexity of existence in tiny pictures. In 1988 and 1989 she participated in the Fringe Cartoonist exhibitions and the State Library [of Victoria] purchased three works, including 9 matchboxes experimenting with the redhead logo. In 1989-90 she drew a scripted comic on the subject of child abuse. The comic, Get it Right , narrowly missed receiving the youth media award, by being defunded. In 1991 she had her first solo exhibition at Lounge, a nightclub where it was in fact too dark to see the work (perfect for a first exhibition). These days she studies the philosophy of science and tries to keep her surrealist tendencies to a minimum. Especially in her work for community organisations that can scrape up enough money to underpay an artist.”

Ingrid Unger mentioned Get it Right (by 'Jo Wait’ sic) in Bonzer ed. A. Sheill (p.78). Funded by Youth Information Incorporated, it featured stories about abuse and was meant to be the first of a series.

In the early 1990s Waite contributed cartoons to Scratch! A scrapbook of radical cartooning in Australia and to Drawing Away: an Australian women’s comic book . Examples include the cover of Scratch! 2 (Winter-Spring 1991), showing a young woman with alternative clothes and hairstyle cornered by a group of boys dressed identically who point and jeer at her – the words 'why conform?’ are scrawled across the wall behind her and she’s saying, 'isn’t it OBVIOUS?’; a 1950s-style father and daughter, He: '...but…but…its (sic)...it’s father’s day!! Didn’t you think to get me Anything??!’/ She: 'Oh really dad! In a Patriarchy, Every day is Father’s day!’ [also published in Drawing Away 6, 1991, 35]. 'White Colonial Capitalsm (sic)’ shows a broad-shouldered white anglo male waiting to be served a meal and wearing a bib with a picture of an Aborigine with his arms crossed on it. Her 2-part cartoon 'Some say Revolutions go too far’ depicts crowds of oppressed people storming through the streets brandishing guns while guards protecting an entrance marked 'PRIVATE PROPERTY’ look on fearfully)/ 'I say they don’t go FAR ENOUGH!’ (a destitute woman and her children looking pleadingly at the viewer while derisive guards in the background protect 'PARTY Headquarters’).

Waite’s book of cartoons Random Play (Carlton South Vic.: J. Waite [1996]) was on order at Mitchell Library in 1999. She also illustrated the 1998 Sydney Road Brunswick Business Directory and Shopping Guide . Included in 2001 Bringing the House Down exhibition (organised by the National Museum of Australia at Old Parliament House, Canberra) with Negative role models , a cartoon of two white women drinking coffee and talking about the Liberals providing this very thing on the issue of Justice for Aboriginals [sic]: published Arena Magazine August-September 2000.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007