We offered cartoonists from all over Australia and New Zealand the chance to win some impressive prizes for their clever creations. They delivered us almost 200 drawings, tackling Australian federal politics, the global financial crisis, NRL scandals, climate change, the swine flu pandemic and much more.
Since taking the lid off the cartoon competition inbox on April Fools Day, we have received a constant stream of submissions, with almost 60 cartoonists competing for prizes totaling $8,250 in value. Entries came from all over Australia and across the Tasman. They were by professionals, amateurs, students and ordinary folk with a sense of humour and a pencil, inkpot, texta or copy of Adobe Creative Suite. They shared the mission of interpreting the political climate to make us — and you — laugh.
Did they succeed? We let you be the judge. We had a whole swag of giveaways for the readers who voted in the competition and your assessment of the candidates has resulted in the selection of ten finalists.
Now the final heat has closed, we are approaching the big day when we announce the winner and someone goes home with the grand prize of $6,000. The finalists will go before a panel of judges including cartoonists Peter Broelman and Bill Leak and Sydney Morning Herald sketchwriter, Annabel Crabb.
Very soon we will announce the winner of the competition, so stay tuned. Congratulations to everyone who took part, whether you submitted a drawing, voted in the competition or just laughed!
Congratulations especially to the winners of the heats: Matt Boulton (Heat 1) for the Peter Garrett-Penny Wong show, Ian Martin (Heat 2) for his poker face-off between Turnbull and Costello, Matt Bissett-Johnson (Heat 3) for Peter Costello’s political strategy in interpretive dance and Oslo Davis (Heat 4) for his satire on practical ways to cope with the financial crisis. Luke Watson drew Kevin stimulating the Big Bear economy (Heat 5) and Lukas’s (Heat 6) depicted him serving up Industry Aid with the ETS pie. Nicholas Beckett won (Heat 7) with his opinion on bankers and Andrew Weldon drew the connection between swine flu panic and tinned spam (Heat 8). Recent winners are Mark Rhodes for Animal Farmacy (Heat 9) and Fiona Katauskas for Peter Costello’s Attention Deficit Disorder (Heat 10).
You can view these and all other entries on the competition site.
Thanks to Crumpler, Melbourne University Press, Scribe Publications, Sydney Writers Festival, Icon and Hopscotch Films for providing some fantastic prizes
Prize winners will be announced on the 25 June. The winning cartoons
will be exhibited at Tap Gallery in Darlinghurst between 22 June and 6
July.
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