Design and Art Australia Online

cartoonist, print-maker and writer, was born on 12 November 1961 at Mooroopna, Victoria. She mostly lived in Melbourne until the late 1990s then moved to Canberra where she still lives with her partner, Francesca Rendle-Short. After passing the HSC in 1979, Horacek completed a BA (Hons) in Fine Arts and English Literature at MU. Initially she wanted to be a writer; her first cartoon, was done in the mid-1980s to illustrate a story written as a member of a community writing group. It made her decide to be a cartoonist instead. Her earliest, very didactic, feminist cartoons were intended for Judy’s Punch , an annual published by Melbourne University, but only one was published before it expired.

Horacek completed a Graduate Diploma in Museum Studies at Victoria College of the Arts with the aim of becoming a print curator, drawing cartoons for community journals like Legal Aid (see WAR) until the perfect print curator job was advertised at the AGSA. 'It was Jan. 20th 1988, when I heard that I didn’t get the job, that I officially became a cartoonist’ (interview with Bridget Cole-Adams, WAR Bulletin March 1999. The position went to Sarah Thomas, later Curator of Australian Art AGSA.)

Horacek’s cartoons have been included in numerous black and white art, political, environmental and women’s exhibitions and publications (see Joan Kerr Archive). The 'Mabo and Moral Community’ issue of Meanjin 2/1993 (Winter) contained three of her postmodernism cartoons: Miss Marple and The Case of Contemporary Theory showing children in a car speaking 'theory’ (“First the death of God… then the death of the author… my goodness – who’ll be next?”), p.228; The Waiting Room of Meaning (“It’s been deferred again.”/ “Damn that Derrida”), p.383; and one of Captain Cook saying 'cogito ergum sum’ and an Aboriginal man replying 'Ahem… sum’ illustrating Tim Rowse’s article, 'Mabo and Moral Anxiety’. A gag on sheep was published in Overland no. 135 (winter 1994), 10.

Horacek has held solo exhibitions of her cartoons since 1992 and more recently of her editioned prints, many at aGOG Canberra and its successor Helen Maxwell Gallery where she continues to exhibit. Her 'Premenstrual in a postmodern age’ series was shown at aGOG on 11-29 November 1995 (see handlist). The Art of Thinking , an editioned print series, was exhibited there in 1997 (p.c). A Horacek retrospective, Laughter, the Universe and Everything , was held at the NGV on 6 March-11 April 1999 and toured Victoria and South Australia in 1999-2000. In 2002 an exhibition of her feminist cartoons at the NMA, I Am Woman, Hear Me Draw , celebrated the centenary of Australian women getting the vote.

An original untitled pen and ink drawing was included in Earthly Delights: a group exhibition about the environment at aGOG (18 August-6 September 1990) with 10% of the sales to Greenpeace. She participated in a community arts and environment project in North Carlton (c.1991) funded by the Australia Council and the Melbourne City Council, which took place over five months and involved students and adult community groups. She was employed for two days a week as cartoonist in residence to talk to community members and to produce cartoons based on their environmental concerns. She also ran cartooning workshops. The resulting cartoons were published in a variety of community arts and environmental magazines and shown in a number of exhibitions including a touring exhibition (see Joan Kerr Archive for interview and cartoons in Scratch! 1991). She has since run lots more cartooning workshops.

Although her early cartoons were obviously influenced by Glen Baxter, they were given a very individual, feminist stance, e.g. The difficulty was trying to conceive of an art outside patriarchy (a woman artist in a smock facing a blank canvas), published Scratch! A scrapbook of radical cartooning in Australia , no.2 (Winter-Spring, 1991), as a postcard and in Past Present (1999). They knew that it was only a matter a time before someone demanded a definition of postmodernism (a Red Indian woman looking towards a wide-eyed cowgirl anxiously biting her nails) also appeared as a postcard and in Past Present 1999 (both cartoons illustrated an article by Catriona Moore). She rapidly evolved her own style of simpler, linear and rather more naive drawing and she never went in for historical parody as Baxter does. Her historical and mythical figures are just like us, e.g. Mrs Mulicuddy(?) cleaning up after God (see postcard in Joan Kerr Archive).

Responding to a survey published in Scratch! (1991) in which contributors were asked questions about their practice, Horacek wrote:

Materials: Pencil, rotring isographs – most often 0.35 for lines, 0.5 for borders and lettering, 1.0 for colouring in, 0.25 for fine detail – eraser, set square, scrap paper, photocopy paper. For mistakes, either start again or use liquid paper or cut and paste with glue stick or double-sided sticky tape. Am currently mucking around a bit with dipping pens as well.

Attraction: The blackness and smoothness of line, the different textures possible when cross-hatching, the precision of line, its evenness (on the other hand, what I like about dipping pens is the unevenness of their line), the ready availability of photocopy paper, its bleedproofness.

Drawbacks: Isographs tend to block up and have to be shaken very vigorously, sometimes for several days, before they will work again. But this is less of a problem now because my pens are used such a lot.

Process: Drawing in pencil then ink over the lines. Depending on how this turns out it’s either the final version so I add pattern and stuff required or it’s a rough version which I trace in pencil then go over in ink, making adjustments at both stages. On bad days I may have to trace through several (100s) versions.

Advantages: Very reproducible – very clear and can be shrunk and stay legible. Can do detail and lots of pattern. I like the effects of different size nibs.

Disadvantages: The line is fairly rigid rather than free-flowing. You can’t sketch with isographs. Would like sometimes to use ink washes as tone but this requires bromiding for reproduction which is beyond the means of a lot of people (don’t know if I would be able to control inkwashes – this is just an idle thought as sometimes crosshatching doesn’t seem to come out right).

Horacek has published five cartoon anthologies: Life on the Edge (1992), Unrequited Love, Nos 1-100 (1994), Women with Altitude (1997, republished by Hodder in 1998), Lost in Space (1998) – essays as well as pictures – and If the Fruit Fits (1999). She appeared in the SMH from time to time in the early 1990s then regularly in the Australian . A 'Women with Altitude’ cartoon appeared weekly, then more or less fortnightly in the weekend Australian Magazine in the late 1990s (odd ones not in the series appeared more irregularly in 2000 and new ones from time to time in 2001 until mid-year when her contract expired and was not renewed). In January 2000 & April 2001 she drew [coloured] editorial cartoons in the Weekend Australian while Nicholson was on holidays. From 1999 Horacek cartoons appeared in the monthly Australian Review of Books until publication ceased in 2001. In 2002 she began appearing weekly in the 'Relax’ section of the Sunday Canberra Times as well as having small (single column) cartoons irregularly on the editorial pages of the Australian (both still happening 2003). She has always been hung in the NMA’s annual Bringing the House Down exhibitions (at OPH, Canberra to 2002 then NMA); in 2001 she had two cartoons, Your concern about global warning and 2001: A Federation Odyssey (NMA website).

In an interview published in the Canberra Times to coincide with the launch of If the Fruit Fits , Horacek explained:

I am surprised that my themes have stayed generally the same. I am interested in looking at the way in which we live in the Western world in the 20th century. I ask what do we do? Many of these things stay the same. I think I have become more subtle and concerned with the art form of the cartoon… The fundamental non-negotiable issues for me are feminism, social justice and common decency. These things inform my work. I want to be positive to people… My cartoons do not alienate men. Feminism to me is not about that… I do want to say things and be political but above all, I have a really strong desire to communicate and have people laugh.

Awards include the Fringe Festival Cartooning Award from the National Cartooning Exhibition, Melbourne, in October 1988. She won awards at both Hysterical Women cartooning exhibitions sponsored by WEL WA (Perth) in 1993 and 1996 (see Rona Chadwick and catalogues). Rainbow included her cartoon dated 2/1/01, The Unjolly Swagman (“I just don’t feel like doing anything.”/ [sheep] “Pull yourself together man – there’s a lot of national identity riding on this”), in her Federation anthology, where she was listed as 'freelance ACT’, with no citations of major awards, unlike the other well-known cartoonists.

In her October 1999 newsletter Judy announced the launch of her website www.horacek.com.au. Designed by Fiona Edge, it contains biographical information, excellent cartoons – including an animated version of Woman with Altitude – and information on Horacek products. It comes out monthly. As well as promoting her books, she sells fridge magnets, cards and brooches, mostly of female figures. For the past few years, Judy Horacek has been producing etchings and linocuts at Megalo Kingston, formerly Studio One, with the expert assistance of master printers, Barb McConchie and Deborah Perrow. In 2002 she produced her first screenprint, a four colour version of Woman with Altitude .

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007