Galway Cartoon Festival report

 

Festival poster with drawing by Italian artist © Marinela Nardi

PCO member Dean Patterson (deAn) writes:

I have just about recovered from my trip to the 4th Annual Galway Cartoon Festival that took place from the 1st to 9th of October.

Dean filling some wall space (bonus points to Dean for sporting a PCO badge).

This years theme was ‘At Large’, which asked cartoonists to imagine what life will be like when we emerge from the cocoon of COVID. Also for the second year running they ran the Irish language exhibition, inviting cartoons in the medium of Irish. This exhibition is held on the island of Inis Oirr, the beautiful and smallest island of the Irish speaking Aran Islands. (The sea was calm, the ferry reasonably steady and breakfast thankfully kept down.)

This.has to be one of the most beautiful locations for a cartoon festival. Photo © Dean Patterson.

It is truely an international cartoon festival with cartoons from across the globe. The very talented French illustrator Fabrice Matray came over to do a workshop which gave us a chance to currupt him in a pub by getting him drunk and joining in with our game of turning local, and very talented, artist Margreat Nolan’s rude squiggles into family friendly gags.

photo © Dean Patterson.

There was also a celebration and display of the artist Augustus John complete with a walking tour by Jonathan Hanon to tell more about the man, and Tom Mathews introduced a wonderful exhibition of the very brilliant illustrator Brian O’Tool, whom he knew as a great friend.

We even managed to see some of this when they finally dragged us out of the pub for 20 minutes.

photo © Dean Patterson.

The company Blacknight Solutions very kindly sponsored a prize of 500 euros for the best of each exhibition. Graeme Keyes, who’s work we will all be familiar with, won the prize for the Irish language exhibition and who still hasn’t got round to joining the PCO like he always says he should, despite me nagging him about it.

A cartoon by © Dean Patterson that he has been to modest to mention in his copy, won the prize for ‘Galway Cartoons At Large’.

Anyway a good time was had by all, it really was a terrifically put together festival in times when that is no easy thing. Galway really is one of the greats of the festival calander and goes from strength to strength each year. After sharing a hotel room for 6 days with Tom Mathews I need a year to recover, but already looking forward to thier 5th!!

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Great short trailer for the festival here

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