cartoonist, illustrator, paper-maker, poster artist, printmaker and sculptor who signed her work 'Gaynor’, was born on 1 March 1952 in Clermont, Central West Queensland, second of the five children of Alma Marie McGeorge (1926-1998) and James Joseph Hunter Cardew. After graduating from Canberra School of Art in 1977, she specialised in decorative arts/crafts then began cartooning as an amusement. In 1984 she produced an artist’s book, Requium for an epidermis , Canberra, Gaynor Cardew , 1984. A book containing [18] pp , with faces etc made up of hand-made paper (NGA). In 1987 she screen-printed cartoon posters with Megalo Access Arts; Incest and Muse were included in printing history: 18 years of megalo access arts , an exhibition at Canberra Museum and Art Gallery from 5 December 1998 to 31 January 1999.

For Kaz Cooke’s 1988 anti-bicentennial cartoon book Gaynor drew a version of the popular 'there goes the neighbourhood’ theme (Aborigines watching the first lot of convicts arrive). A 12-part untitled etching printed by Canberra’s Studio One in 1988 (NGA, Gift of Studio One, 1989) depicts a depressed woman musing about confiding to friends and lovers who then go away, hence 'there are bits of me floating around in people’s minds’, with the final caption reading 'I wish they’d bring them back and make me a real person’. 1989 posters include several for the disabled, e.g. Are You an Effective Communicator? (for Deaf People: NGA) and Are You Into BONDage? ('then try getting around your usual haunts in a wheelchair’: NGA).

Gaynor drew cartoons for many feminist publications and websites, including cards for the Australian Women’s Party and cartoons for the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. In the late 1990s she produced Roy Lichenstein-style cards (on paper made 'from plantation timber’) with Green Media, Clear Mountain, Queensland, e.g. man and woman kissing with him thinking “Why am I here? What is the meaning of it all? Am I allowing the pleasures of the flesh to override my development as a sensitive human being?” and her thinking “The fridge needs cleaning”. She illustrated Valerie Parv’s romantic advice book, I’ll have what she’s having: How to hook your hero and keep him yours forever (Mandarin Books: Kew, Victoria, 1997), with funny and tough Glen Baxter style cartoons that gave the banal text a witty ironic edge without undermining it. In July 1997 she was included in Barbary O’Brien’s The Cartoon Show at Noarlunga Community Arts Centre SA with over 30 other Australian cartoonists: Judy Horacek , Joan Rosser , David Pope (Heinrich Heinze) , Rona Chadwick , Sue Wicks , Glen le Lievre, Michael Atchison , Peter Broelman, Angie Lyndon etc.

Gaynor Cardew died from cancer on 5 September 1999 and was buried on 8 September in Pineroo Lawn Cemetery, Petrie, Brisbane. At the end of 1999 Meredith Hinchliffe (ACT) organised a retrospective exhibition of original artworks (mainly cartoons) at the former aGOG Gallery, Kingston, ACT. Prof Marion Sawer (Political Science, RSSS, ANU), another fan, had commissioned cartoons from her for women’s political publications when Equal Opportunity Officer for the Federal Government and gave a paper that focussed on her work at ANU in 2000. She was one of the 9 women cartoonists included in the Bunker Gallery’s 2002-3 women cartoonists’ show. Her two cartoons illustrated in the catalogue show a mother in bed surrounded by the family, with the husband saying 'You can’t get sick, your kids need you, your mother needs you, your company needs you, the P& C needs you.’ and mother at the kitchen sink to her two small children: 'I really don’t mind the stress involved in trying to keep us financially viable, the cooking, dressing, and picking up after you kids, it’s just I wouldn’t mind a bit of adulation occasionally, like calling me “Your Highness”’.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007