[*Shameless headline to attract attention] Recently I went to Whitstable to check out this exhibition of nudes on postcards to which I contributed. Anyone could enter and the cards were stuck, unframed, on the gallery walls. A simple idea which produced a huge range of interpretations and a very enjoyable show.
All entries had to be submitted via the mail. So, as you can see, mine is a bit crumpled and some franking is visible. This added to the charm of the entries, I felt. The exhibition, at the Horsebridge Arts Centre, was a gesture of solidarity for staff at the local Whistable sorting office which is under threat of closure.
My card is a version of this Private Eye cartoon. I was pleased to see that a lot of the artworks approached the subject with humour.
Footnote: Every time I go to Whistable, I get this song going around my head:
And here's the original version, which contains the line "He don't care about Colonel Gaddafi/He's having a fag down the Tudor Cafe". Genius.
It's open to anyone and the idea is that you create on a postcard an original nude in any medium (photograph, pencil, paint, collage etc -- they didn't actually say cartoon ...) and send it in by post. Seemed like a crazy enough idea, so I decided to have a go.
I'm hoping mine makes it in time for the deadline. I was a bit late getting around to it, being very busy lately, but I actually knew about it weeks ago as a Whistable newspaper commissioned me to do a cartoon to go with an article about the launch of the Post Nude project. I put the two topics of postcards and nudes together and naturally came up with a tribute to the late, great, Donald McGill, right.
