Richard’s account of our night on the island

As is now the tradition of the Galway Cartoon Festival, we sailed out to pass a day and a night on Inis Oírr, smallest of the famous Aran Islands. We do this (a) because we’re committed to promoting cartooning in the Irish language and the island is a vibrant Gaeltacht (an area where Irish is the everyday speech), but also (b) because it’s heaps of fun.

It’s a way for the team to unwind after the main events over the weekend, but it’s definitely a working holiday. First on the bill was a workshop with our old friends Coláiste Ghobnait, the island’s secondary school, where Caoimhe Lavelle and our guests Dave Coverly and Lucie Arnoux (pictured above) did a wonderful cartoon workshop. I was sorry to miss that, I’d really enjoyed drawing with the students of that school on our last couple of visits, but the events of the last two days – and the weeks of preparations for them – had left me utterly zombified. I got off the boat and went straight to bed, where I dreamed fitfully about framing an infinite number of drawings.

I regained consciousness to find it was show time! We had two openings on Inis Oírr this year. One is the very same Tarraing É I nGaeilge show of cartoons in Irish that we put on in the city. The other is an exhibition of new work by American comic and storyboard artist Joey Mason, who has been our artist in residence on the island for the last month and whose book Quay Street, High Street & Shop Street Sketches, created in Galway last year, may still be available in Charlie Byrne’s.

Things were in full swing by the time we completed the complex traipse up from sea level to Áras Éanna, the great arts centre on the island. Dara McGee, our man on Aran, gave a lovely bilingual launch speech. Pat Quinn sang a few of his excellent comedy songs, and then… it was time to draw on the walls!

Along with some enthusiastic local children, Dave Coverly, Jim Cogan, Tom Mathews, Dean Patterson, Lucie Arnoux, Caoimhe Lavelle, Dara McGee, Margaret Nolan and myself decorated a wall in the arts centre with whatever came into out heads.

It’s sad that surface needs to be repainted every year.

But things really kicked into gear on the way home! As you might know, it’s dark on the Aran Islands at night. Stumbles happen; I tripped myself leaving Áras Éanna. Well Dean Patterson, our star Irish cartoonist for this year’s festival, was a little ahead of our group when I think he got some alert on his phone. Trying to respond, he accidentally turned his phone’s torch off. Instantly plunged into complete and utter darkness, Dean fell over a low stone wall.

Excited by this attention, the low stone wall then fell over him.

Hearing some pretty unusual sounds ahead we rushed up, to find Dean somewhat covered in rocks but explaining politely that this was OK and not even all that unusual. And had we seen what he’d done with his pens? Fortunately someone in the group had first aid experience and knew where to poke Dean for damage tests. Once it was established that nothing very spinal had happened, the ever-resourceful Margaret clambered into the field and physically hoisted him up. Dean was in some pain, but wouldn’t even imagine not coming back to Tigh Ned where we’d planned to spend the evening drawing and drinking.

And that’s where he discovered that if you’re going to trip over a wall in the dark on an Aran Island, it’s better to do that when not surrounded by fellow cartoonists.

The Galway Cartoon Festival wishes to thank every person who submitted work to us this year. As always, we apologise that we have room to show only a small fraction of what we receive.

Most of our exhibitions continue to be displayed, and many works are still for sale:

Beasts! and General Mayhem are still on show at Portershed A Dó, alongside solo exhibitions by Dave Coverly and Lucie Arnoux.

Women in Technology appears in the Town Hall Theatre, along with solo shows by Dean Patterson and Malak Mattar.

Tarraing É I nGaeilge is on exhibition at the Áras Eanna arts centre on Inis Oírr, along with a solo show of new work by Joey Mason – who was our artist in residence there this year – and cartoons we created for Water Safety Ireland.

Some of Snowflake’s Progress by Ben Jennings is still on view at Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop.

Finally, The Cartoon Trail is still in shop windows around the town – details here.

Beasts!

Aidan Cooney	Ireland
Aongus Collins	Ireland
Ben Jennings	UK
Boris Erenburg	Israel
Brady Izquierdo	Cuba
Brandon Hicks	Canada
Clemens Moses	Germany
Cristina Sampaio	Portugal
Dave Coverly	USA
Dean Patterson	Ireland
Donal Casey	Ireland
Elena Ospina	Colombia
Fadi Abou Hassan	Norway
Fergus Boylan	N. Ireland
Glenn Marshall	UK
Graeme Keyes	Ireland
Ivailo Tsvetkov	Bulgaria
Kipper Williams	UK
Mark Winter	New Zealand
Martyn Turner	Ireland
Mick O'Hara	Ireland
Mike Stokoe	UK
Nancy Ohanian	USA
Nicolas Vadot	Belgium
Osama Hajjaj	Jordan
Phil Witte	USA
Ron McGeary	UK
Sherif Arafa	UAE
Steve Best	UK
Subi	UK
Tjeerd Royaards	Netherlands
Will McPhail	UK

General Mayhem

Aidan Cooney	Ireland
Aongus Collins	Ireland
Ben Jennings	UK
Boris Erenburg	Israel
Brady Izquierdo	Cuba
Brandon Hicks	Canada
Clemens Moses	Germany
Cristina Sampaio	Portugal
Dave Coverly	USA
Dean Patterson	Ireland
Donal Casey	Ireland
Elena Ospina	Colombia
Fadi Abou Hassan	Norway
Fergus Boylan	N. Ireland
Glenn Marshall	UK
Graeme Keyes	Ireland
Ivailo Tsvetkov	Bulgaria
Kipper Williams	UK
Mark Winter	New Zealand
Martyn Turner	Ireland
Mick O'Hara	Ireland
Mike Stokoe	UK
Nancy Ohanian	USA
Nicolas Vadot	Belgium
Osama Hajjaj	Jordan
Phil Witte	USA
Ron McGeary	UK
Sherif Arafa	UAE
Steve Best	UK
Subi	UK
Tjerd Royaards	Netherlands
Will McPhail	UK

Tarraing É I nGaeilge

Aongus Collins	Ireland
Caoimhe Lavelle	Ireland
Ciara Kenny	Ireland
Dara McGee	Ireland
Dean Patterson	N. Ireland
Graeme Keyes	Ireland
Joey Mason	USA
Sallyann Ní Chiarba	Ireland
Seán Begley	Ireland
Tom Mathews	Ireland
Viacheslav Kapreliants	Ukraine

Women In Technology

Ameen Alhabarah	Saudi Arabia
Caoimhe Lavelle	Ireland
Ciaraíoch	Ireland
Cristina Bernazzani	Italy
Cristina Sampaio	Portugal
Fergus Boylan	N. Ireland
Gatis Šļūka	Latvia
Ivailo Tsvetkov	Bulgaria
Jonathan Wilson	UK
Miriam Wurster	Germany
Ramses Morales Izquierdo	Cuba
Richard Chapman	Ireland
Sarah Boyce	UK
Sepideh Aghaei	Iran
Tom Mathews	Ireland
Vladimir Kazanevsky	Ukraine
Will McPhail	UK

Cartoon Trail

Dave Coverly	USA
Gatis Šļūka	Latvia
Jim Cogan	Ireland
Kipper Williams	UK
Mark Winter	New Zealand
Mick O'Hara	Ireland
Miriam Wurster	Germany
Phil Witte	USA
Sarah Boyce	Ireland
Teja Fischer	Germany
Will McPhail	UK

Meet the Galway Cartoon Festival synchronized swim team: Joey Mason, Fergus Boylan, Ben Jennings, Harry Burton, Will McPhail.

These loonies thought it would be normal and fun to go for a swim in Salthill this morning. Catch them in PorterHouse 2 at our panel discussion this afternoon.

Well, the survivors anyway.

Are your festivals huge fun? Do you find the intense amusement of your festival bouncing around your head for hours and hours?

If not, then maybe you need new Galway Cartoon Festival.

Galway Cartoon Festival. Refreshes the parts that other festivals say on the tin.

Thank you, to everyone who attended our opening. It was an absolutely unforgettable blur.

As for the rest of ye… the fun has only just begun!

Join us on Saturday for Dean Patterson’s exhibition, the comic creators panel discussion, interviews will Lucie Arnoux and Will McPhail, and the launch of Joey Mason’s book of Galway sketches.

Surprise! The Galway Cartoon Festival opens tonight at 6.00pm in PorterShed a Dó on Market Street. Come along and meet our great friends and amazing guests. The speeches will be short and to the point – like cartoons – and they will be followed immediately by a chance to draw on the big screen!

How was your Culture Night?

We had such…an…amazing…time!

Huge, huge thanks to everyone who attended our Cartoon Workshop or the Let’s Draw! late event, and all the people at Galway City Council, the French Embassy, Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, The Live Drawing Project, and of course Culture Night itself.

You gave a lot of people in Galway, of all ages, backgrounds and walks of life, a night to remember.

It has to be said it was an amazing evening all round, with a fabulous atmosphere throughout Galway’s city centre. Culture Night has really taken off in this city in the last few years. Middle Street in particular was a creative fairyland thanks to the efforts of Fíbín and An Taibhdhearc.

Our contribution began there too, at 6 pm in Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, with a cartooning workshop for all ages led by Margaret Nolan and Richard Chapman with the assistance of Harry Burton. About 30 participants joined in our creative drawing games, crowded in amongst the shelves of art books.

This was followed at sundown by Let’s Draw!, a Culture Night Late event at the Spanish Arch. Here French street spectacle group The Live Drawing Project used their innovative software – and a truly enormous projector – to blast drawings onto the old city museum building. These were created by the audience on their mobile devices, led and inspired by the cartoonists we invited.

These guests were Graeme Keyes of The Phoenix fame, Harry Burton of the Irish Examiner, and Brazilian comic artist Mari Rolin. Festival director Richard Chapman also drew live, and online contributions came in from past festival guest the wonderful Liza Donnelly of The New Yorker as well as upcoming participants Joey Mason – currently artist-in-residence at Áras Éanna on Inis Oírr – and Lucie Arnoux.

A special thank you also goes to animator Charlotte Connolly, who stepped up out of the audience to do one final gigantic drawing when the rest of us were exhausted…

As you can see from the images, the mood was out of this world. Somewhere around 2,000 members of the public used the web portal to contribute an astonishing 10,000 drawings to the event.

And Kate said Yes!

Friday night is… CULTURE NIGHT

Culture Night is a national celebration of creativity in Ireland – and as it falls shortly before our festival, an opportunity for us to give you a taste of things to come. This year, the Galway Cartoon Festival will be contributing in two ways: With a cartoon drawing workshop, and by helping to organize Galway’s first event of the new Culture Night Late initiative.

Cartoon Workshop

Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop

6:00 – 7:30pm. Free entry (but space is limited)

The Festival will organize a cartoon workshop, introducing techniques and games to help you enjoy cartooning as a fun way to be creative. Materials will be provided, but you can bring your favourite drawing tools if you like. The event will be held in the Art Section (naturally), and numbers will be limited.

We will also be encouraging you to take part in the following Culture Night Late event…

Let’s Draw

Spanish Arch

9:00pm – Late. Free entry (outdoor night event)

Brilliant French street art company The Live Drawing Project is joining the Galway Cartoon Festival to provide an interactive digital cartoon experience!

Meet us at the Spanish Arch with your phone or tablet – or just join in online. We’ll be projecting a vast collaborative canvas with everyone’s drawings that keeps evolving all the time. Draw as much as you want. Express yourself along with some of the big-name cartoonists taking part!

Guest artists appearing in person include national cartoonists Graeme Keyes (The Phoenix) and Harry Burton (Irish Examiner), comic creator Mari Rolin (Iron Circus), Festival guest Joey Mason and team members Tom Mathews and Richard ‘Serg’ Chapman. Other names in the cartoon business may be making live or online appearances, including our guest for the upcoming festival, French comic artist Lucie Arnoux!

Think of it as a circus, but one where you can join in. All you need is an average smartphone – check The Live Drawing Project website for instructions.

Submissions are now closed for the 8th Galway Cartoon Festival (opening October 4)

We want to thank everyone who took time to send us their work. We’ve received well over 1,500 cartoons via email, with more submissions on paper still to be counted. The vast scale of this response is astonishing to us.

The hard part – selecting the small proportion of these that we have room to exhibit – now begins…

If you have sent us material but not received any acknowledgment, please get in touch.

We’ll be needing a hand with a few things during the festival. If you’re interested in helping out, please contact info@galwaycartoonfestival.ie

Deadline: August 30

Remember, we have four exhibitions open to entries this year

1. Beasts! – Cartoons with animals
2. Women in Technology – A female take on our hi-tech world
3. Tarraing É I nGaeilge – New cartoons in the Irish language
4. General Mayhem – Whatever the heck you like

Full Submission Details Here

#GalwayCartoons

Friday 19 to Friday 25 July

A Cartoon Trail & Auction to mark World Drowning Prevention Day, 25th July 2024.

Featuring original artwork by Mick O’Hara (co-creator of Zig and Zag and Rodge and Podge), Graeme Keyes (the Phoenix, Private Eye, Irish Daily Mail), and Serg (Galway Advertiser, Galway City Tribune, The Phoenix, Private Eye).

Water Safety Cartoon Trail:

• Cava Bodega and Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop (Middle Street).
• Thomas Dillon’s Jewellers and Tigh Neachtain (Quay Street)
• Nelly’s Boutique and Bernie Keogh Art (Cross Street)

After being on view for one week, the artworks will be auctioned with the proceeds going to Water Safety Ireland and the Cartoon Festival.

#DrowningPrevention

See The Cartoons

Media Coverage

• Galway Advertiser
• Galway City Tribune
• Galway Bay FM

We’re adding another new exhibition this year which, like most of our shows, is open to public submissions.

The theme of this one is “Women in Technology”. We invite cartoonists from all around the world to celebrate the achievements of women working in technological fields, and mark the challenges that they have faced and still face today.

This show is being produced by the Galway Cartoon Festival in cooperation with the Insight Centre and Galway Science and Technology Festival.

The selected entries will be on display as part of the Cartoon Festival (4 – 9 October) in a city centre venue, with entrance free to the public.

The deadline for submissions is August 30th – but the sooner you get things to us the better!

See here for all the details about submitting work to our exhibitions.

Ain’t it a beauty?

Created by our very dear and talented friend Cristina Sampaio, it picks up on the theme of one of this year’s central exhibitions – “Beasts!”

Cristina’s work appears in major newspapers across Europe and the USA, including Courrier International and The New York Times, and she is well known too for her fabulous – and controversial – animated contributions to Spam Cartoon on Portuguese TV. You may have caught the great workshop she gave in Cava last year about her artistic method, or have heard her speak both movingly and hilariously in the round-table discussion we held in An Taibhdhearc back in ’22.

Sadly Cristina cannot join us in Galway this October as she will be having her own solo show in the Amadora International Comic Festival in Lisbon. Do check that out if you’re in the vicinity.

Please remember to follow us on social media! Links are in the footer.

Twenty selected artworks from the Galway Cartoon Festival’s hit exhibitions go under the hammer from 12:30 to 3:30 this Saturday in the Town Hall Theatre gallery-bar. This is your chance to own a framed cartoon print by a remarkable artist, and help grow the city’s internationally respected celebration of disrespectful art.

Wine and cheese are laid on by Tigh Neachtain and Sheridans respectively, while wielding the hammer – a show in itself – will be champion auctioneer Kevin Hasset. The ingenious Gerry Hanberry and Justin McCarthy provide musical accompaniment.

Along with an exhibition of magnificent work by Brady Izquierdo Rodriguez from Cuba (opening on Friday at 5:00 in the same venue), this extravagant brunch forms part of a “taster weekend” for the next Galway Cartoon Festival which begins on October 4.

For Festival 2024

We have three four! shows that are open to everyone:

Beasts!

Beasts. Of the air, of the field, of the seas. Beasts of burden and beasts of buoyancy. Beasts in human form. Beasts in human pants.

Beasts from beyond, and from whatever the opposite of beyond is. Just… any sort of beast. What does the word mean to you?

I’ve written it too many times now, I can’t remember.

Just send us some funny animals.

Be it cute fluffy puppy or the deadly banana slug, mythological monstrosity or bouncy birdy, we want your beasts!

General Mayhem

And then there’s the show for everything else – especially topical and satirical cartoons – from any place and on any issue around all the world.

Including any great gags that happen not to be about beasts.

Tarraing É I nGaeilge

Tá Féile cartúin na Gaillimhe ag cuartú Cartúin as Gaeilge!

Déanfar taispeantas ar ghach iontrál a ghlacfhainn an Fhéile, i nGaillimh agus ar Inis Oírr. Spriocdáta ná an 30ú Lúnasa.

Which is Irish for “Draw It In Irish“, and is our exhibition specifically for cartoons in that language – the only one of its kind in the world today!

Works selected for Tarr­aing é i nGaeilge will be shown both in Galway City and on Inis Oírr in the Aran Islands.

Women In Techno­logy

(NEW!)

We’re adding another show. The theme of this one is “Women in Technology”.

We invite cartoonists from all around the world to celebrate the achievements of women working in technological fields, and mark the challenges that they have faced and still face today.

This show is being produced by the Galway Cartoon Festival in cooperation with the Insight Centre and Galway Science and Technology Festival.

The selected entries will be on display as part of the Cartoon Festival (4 – 9 October) in a city centre venue, with entrance free to the public.

The Terms and the Condi­tions

• All our exhibitions are open to submissions from anyone, anywhere.
• You can send as many as you like to each exhibition.
• Digital submissions should be sent, as 300 dpi jpegs please, to: info@galwaycartoonfestival.ie
• Please include a little biographical information.
• The selected digital submissions will be printed and framed by the Galway Cartoon Festival. These framed prints will be offered for sale to help meet the costs of running this year’s festival.
• Submitted cartoons may be used in publicity materials for the festival. They will be credited to the artist.

The Submission Deadline Is:

Friday 30 August ’24

But earlier entries stand a better chance of being selected, so please get them to us soon!

Friday October 4th to Wednesday October 9th

Make you flight plans accordingly… X