Design and Art Australia Online

Cartoonist, film-maker, animator, sculptor and etcher, claims to have been born and raised on an orchard in Doncaster, Victoria, on the outskirts of Melbourne. He drew for Monash University's student newspaper Lot’s Wife and worked for the Melbourne Herald before travelling to Europe, Asia and North America in 1953. He reached London in 1954 and worked in England for six years, including a stint on Punch under Malcolm Muggeridge. His comments on London are cited in Jensen (p.10). He also lived and worked in the USA and had cartoons published in the New Yorker. The original of a cartoon published 22 November 1969 showing a Spanish dancer in a New York apartment (artist’s collection) was included in Joan Kerr and Jo Holder’s 1999 S.H. Ervin Gallery exhibition, Artists in Black and White. Back home in 1960, Petty offered work to the Bulletin, including roughs rejected by the New Yorker; they were preferred to his more finished work (Rolfe, p.271). Draws on paper with a pentel pen (Foyle, 95) and increasingly directly onto the computer.

Petty joined the Sydney Daily Mirror as its political cartoonist in 1961, then transferred to the Australian in 1964 (e.g. 1964 cartoon ill. King, 174; NLA original(?), 'What’s the common fee for treatment of fainting on seeing the hospital bill’ 1 March 1970). Then followed the Melbourne Age in 1976, where he remains. Three 1970s originals, including one c.1972, are at ML PXD 764. The S.H. Ervin exhibition (cats 139-42) included: '“We must avoid a monopoly situation!”/ “Yes – Let’s ring Rupert!”’ published Age January 1989; Stop laughing this is serious – a parody of Stan Cross's famous cartoon with 'Unions’ clinging to 'Keating’ – Age 15 April 1989; The Muse Machine published Age 24 February 1990; and One day, son, all yours could be this, published Age 8 September 1990 – all from Petty’s own collection.

Dinah & Michael Dysart own the original of 'Thank goodness they’re elected, now we won’t have to go to any more art exhibitions’ (but Dinah couldn’t locate it in 1999). 'I think you’ve cut something important’ [on ABC cuts] and 'Fade away’ [on Pauline Hanson], both published in the Age in April 1997, and 'Things take time to go through the system’ of July 1997, were exhibited in Bringing the House Down: 12 Months of Australian Political Humour (Canberra: National Museum of Australia/ Old Parliament House exhibition, 1997), cats 27, 49, 77. His cartoon on the economy won best cartoon in the 1998 Bringing the House Down show in which he continues to exhibit, including 2 cartoons in the 2001 show.

Petty has contributed to very many papers, magazines, posters etc, including Time Magazine (Australia) and the Australian as well as working in animation, sculpture and etchings. His cartoons include a print about TV flowers looking so real that a viewer yells 'FAKE!’ at the real ones heading The Broadsheet 3: Where are all the flowers going (poster containing 3 individual prints by three artists and 6 poems on one sheet, 1968 NGA) and Overland 1969 (ill. Lindesay 1979, 315); also no 41, Winter 1969, pp. 12 & 23, two cartoons also critical of television; cover no. 35 (Summer 1966-7), Labor Party issue; no.26 (April 1963, 33) “Let’s see now… one for the town hall, one for the railway station, one for the cement works, one for…” (a military general pointing to rocket launchers); more in file. He has published several books of cartoons, made posters (e.g. the official Adelaide Festival of Arts poster 1976), animated films – Leisure won an Oscar in 1977 – and digital TV animated films. Petty and Henry Smith’s multi-media The Law Machine was shown at Parliament House in 1997. An exhibition of his etching was at the Australian Archives, Canberra, in 2002.

Petty was married to Julie Rigg (ABC Arts National Film critic) for years and they had 2 sons; he has at least one son by his second wife.

Under a good self-portrait on an article on contemporary cartoonists in the Australian (1-7 April 1999), Petty of the Age stated:

The aim is to be alarming, funny and correct at the same time. Of course, it’s pretty hard to alarm now we are globally connected to the world’s maddest events. We draw the politicians, but these days the politicians have largely given up on old ideas like equity, redistribution of wealth and service. They do sell-offs and safety nets. Governments will always get it wrong, they are trying to please people who generate wealth and people who haven’t got any. We draw them getting it wrong.

The panel says:

The artist: “Fresh, challenging and equally unfair to everyone.”

The politician: “Not so much a cartoonist as a national psychotherapist.”

Examples: The Penguin Petty includes a cartoon of archaeologists finding Venus de Milo’s arms and a strip about woman not wearing a bra and her husband not wearing underpants because of Women’s Lib (she doesn’t wash underpants). The few originals in SLNSW include a rather dull drawing (V*/CART/35) for the SLNSW Open Week Poster 1980 (copy of poster also in collection), and The Floor of Filth showing a couple running for an ark labelled 'Victoria’ to shelter from a tiny black cloud labelled 'Portnoy’s Complaint’ in the sky, n.d. (DG A57, f.11: in SLNSW 1999 b/w show curated by Joan Kerr, Craig Judd and Jo Holder).

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007