caricaturist and cartoonist, studied commercial art at Queensland College of Art. From 1992 until c.2001 she worked as a cartoonist and illustrator on the Courier Mail . At the ABWAC’s 12th annual Stanley awards in October 1996 she was nominated as Artist of the Year, along with Bill Leak , Eric Löbbecke , Steven O’Brien , Cathy Wilcox and Peter Wilkinson . The winner was Leak, whom Applegate caricatured in Inkspot 28 (Spring 1997: back cover). She organised an ABWAC exhibition sponsored by the Courier Mail , 'Media Illustration, Past, Present and Future’, held at the State Library of Queensland in November 1996 and wrote an article about some of the artists in it for Inkspot 28 (Spring 1997), 9. In 1999 she was elected President of the Queensland branch of the ABWAC.
Applegate won first (acquisitive) prize in the 1996 Rotary National and International Cartoon Awards at Coffs Harbour for her large coloured caricature of Jeff Kennett. ( Sturt Krygsman won Cartoon of the Year with another caricature of Kennett.) The following year she again won the best caricature category, followed by two further wins in this category. All four prize-winners are in the Coffs Harbour Rotary Collection and were included in the Bunker Gallery’s women cartoonists’ exhibition, Laugh Lines , in 2002-3 (caricatures of Tim Fisher and Mal Colston were illustrated in the catalogue). She also won Artist of the Year and Best Caricature Stanley awards in the 1990s.
The original of Applegate’s caricature of British PM John Major, published in the Courier Mail 11 January 1997, was exhibited in Bringing the House Down: 12 Months of Australian Political Humour (Canberra: National Museum of Australia/ Old Parliament House exhibition, 1997), cat.5. The following year she won the People’s Choice. In the fourth Bringing the House Down exhibition (1999), she exhibited two of her typically large and brightly coloured cartoons: a group caricature, Bubble pollies (published Walkley Magazine August 1999), and Howard and Costello’s GST Show ( Courier Mail March 1999). The 2001 Bringing the House Down show included her 'Temptation big survivor camp’ (NMA website). Applegate’s caricatures are large, detailed, exuberant and colourful. Applegate left Brisbane and the Courier Mail in about 2001, changed her surname to Brooker and moved to Newcastle, NSW, where she works full-time as an artist in her 'Purple Spider Studio’.
- Writers:
- Kerr, Joan
- Date written:
- 1996
- Last updated:
- 2007
