Design and Art Australia Online

cartoonist, lives and works at Fremantle, WA. She had cartoons in Refractory Girl 51 (Spring 1996) and in Scratch! A scrapbook of radical cartooning in Australia No.2, Winter-Spring 1991, eg comic strip EUCALYPTA – TOO OLD TO WORK – TOO YOUNG TO DIE? re young woman at an employment agency being given the run around; KEV’S CENTRE for TRANSFORMATION of Human Consciousness and Holistic Plumbling Service Pty. Ltd - mechanic charging a customer over the phone for 'absent healing’ on a blocked drain and counselling on 'your relationship with your new dual-flush cistern’. Her political cartoon in Scratch! with a couple of Greenies watching U.S. naval ships leaving Fremantle Harbour and commenting, “When we were hoping for an end to the live sheep trade this wasn’t what we had in mind, Genevieve”, was accompanied by the following explanation: 'This one got in the [Fremantle] Herald the size of a postage stamp!! Freo sends sheep to Arab countries and US ships have R & R here. At the time [this cartoon was drawn] Oz and US ships were going to the Gulf and the sheep trade to Iraq was cut – Ange’. Another shows a couple walking past a greengrocer’s stall displaying fruit and vegetables labelled 'bit dodgy’, 'organic’, 'SPRAYED 12 times with Toxo’, 'grown in dodgy soil’ and remarking, “Alfie’s not much a salesman but one has to admire his integrity”.

Responding to a survey published in Heinrich Hinze’s [David Pope’s] 1991 Scratch! which asked contributing cartoonists about their practice, Ange wrote:

“Materials I use Artline pens (and get moaned at for my grey cartoons). I love using dip pens but I haven’t had time to evolve a style that is as neat as I like with a dip pen! I want to {?} long-term. Also, HB or B pencil, rubber and white-out. I used to use recycled paper and was distraught when told it did not help the reproduction process. So I use a layout pad mostly, being too mean to use expensive paper. Attraction I love the smooth feel of the paper and the sensuous flow of the Artline as it flows across the page – ahh – ahh – ahh. Drawbacks White-out sometimes takes colour out of the ink on top so there’s a faded bit in the cartoon. You have to go over it a lot. Then it looks darker than the rest of the cartoon.

“Process I draw mostly directly fast with the pen and decide what the cartoon is about during the process. Any hard bits I either do in pencil first or snow pake out afterwards. After discovering that white-out contains an organochlorine I was inhaling I tried using pencil first but it formalises the result so now I try not to smell the white-out. I like the spontaneity of the pen. I think I’m much too affected by the medium I’m using. Advantages Stuff gets dredged up straight from the subconcious if you start drawing with no ideas consciously. Disadvantages Sometimes what comes up is very personal and whilst it contributes to my personal growth it isn’t suitable for publication. Meditation and dancing are great for inspiring cartoons for me.”

In 1990 Angie Lyndon drew for Green Left Weekly and was appointed a cartoonist on the Fremantle Herald. She was still drawing cartoons for the latter in 2001, when she had an original of a cartoon done for it, 'Throw him a banana’ in the 2001 Bringing the House Down exhibition (National Museum of Australia at Old Parliament House, Canberra). In 1993 several of her 'Marlene’ single gags and 'Eucalypta’ strips were included in Hysterical Women, e.g. 'Marlene found her grass roots research into women’s rôles began to pall after the first nine years’ (a housewife with two kids), 8. She was in vol 2, Hysterical Women ’96, with a single frame gag about traffic polution and four 'Eucalypta’ strips. Barbary O’Brien's The Cartoon Show (Noarlunga Community Arts Centre SA, July 1997) contained cartoons by her and 30+ other Australian cartoonists, including Judy Horacek, Joan Rosser, David Pope (Heinrich Heinze), Rona Chadwick, Gaynor Cardew, Sue Wicks, Glen le Lievre, Michael Atchison and Peter Broelman.

(signs “ange“ under face with hand as mouth & nose in 1993, under hand in ’96)

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007