Sharon Murdoch

Sharon Murdoch is a cartoonist born in 1960 in Invercargill, New Zealand. She is the first woman to regularly produce political cartoons for New Zealand mainstream media, and draws the cartoon cat Munro who accompanies the daily crossword in Fairfax newspapers. Murdoch has won New Zealand Cartoonist of the Year three times: 2016, 2017 and 2018.

Sharon Murdoch
Born1960
Invercargill, New Zealand
NationalityNew Zealander
Area(s)Cartoonist, Designer
Notable works
Murdoch: the political cartoons of Sharon Murdoch
Awards"Cartoonist of the Year" Canon Media awards (2016, 2017) and Voyager Media awards (2018)
http://domesticanimal.tumblr.com

Life

Of Ngāi Tahu and English descent,[1] Sharon Murdoch was raised in a working class family in Invercargill, which she described as "a bit like growing up in Iceland but without the epic poems".[2] Her father persuaded her school to admit her to all-male Technical Drawing classes, for which she won the school prize.[3]

Murdoch studied graphic design at Wellington Polytechnic School of Design, and worked as a graphic designer for Wellington City Art Gallery, for the Legal Resources Trust, and with activist design group the Wellington Media Collective as its only female graphic designer.[3][4] In 1999/2000 she did Volunteer Service Abroad in the township of Indinsane, South Africa, working with a Xhosa women’s community development group co-drawing comics on HIV/AIDS prevention and early childhood education.[1][5] She continues to work as a designer and illustrator.

Murdoch lives in Wellington and is married with a daughter, stepdaughter, two cats (la Luna and Munro), and a dog (Iris).[6][7][8] Munro, named after a dog in a book by American author T.R. Pearson, is this inspiration for her daily newspaper cartoon of the same name.[9]

Career

Murdoch began cartooning full-time in her early 50s, after being encouraged by former partner Trace Hodgson, a political cartoonist for the New Zealand Listener.[2] Her first cartoons were of Munro the cat, appearing daily alongside the crossword in the Dominion Post, which continues to run in Fairfax newspapers; each one incorporates a clue from that day's crossword.[1] She then began doing "political illustration" for the columnist Tracy Watkins;[6] her first proper political cartoon appeared in the Waikato Times in August 2013.[10] Her political work is published in the Sunday Star Times, where she was appointed political cartoonist in December 2014,[1] the Christchurch Press, and occasionally the Dominion Post or the Waikato Times: usually cartoons but sometimes illustrations in collaboration with others, such as the feature Growing Up Kiwi: Sophie's Story.[11]

Murdoch is the first woman to produce regular cartoons for a New Zealand newspaper.[2] She signs her work "Murdoch", initially concerned that her work would be read differently if people knew she was female. "As a woman cartooning, I will inevitably see things differently to a man."[9] The issues of most importance to her personally are social justice, animal welfare, and the environment.[6] Her favourite politician to draw is Judith Collins: "She's so fantastic – what would we do without her?"[6][9]

In 2016, a 200 page book on Murdoch's work was published,[12] which topped Unity Books' bestseller list[10]

Social justice

Murdoch has a strong theme of social justice throughout her work. Her final-year thesis at Wellington Polytechnic School of Design was graphical material such as logos and posters for Wellington Rape Crisis Centre.

Another example is the Take The TVZZ Kiwi-Meter Quiz! cartoon from Christchurch's The Press, in which a Māori woman is depicted abused and covered in bandages of the various 'special treatments' Māori experience in New Zealand, such as lower educational outcomes and substandard housing.[13] Murdoch has said that she feels caring is part of her job as a cartoonist, and that 'underneath I'm really angry about a lot of the things I'm drawing about'.[12]

Awards and honours

Murdoch was nominated for "Cartoonist of the Year" in the 2014 and 2015 Canon Media Awards, and won in 2016 and 2017, the first woman to receive this award. The awards were renamed the Voyager Media Awards, and Murdoch won again in 2018.[14] Judges applauded her "fresh style and satirical intelligence" and described her as "gleeful and ingenious, and very funny, but she can shock us too"; one commented, "Sharon Murdoch's political cartoons satisfy the two golden rules of the art form. They make you laugh and are wickedly caricatured."[15] Her cartoon The Alphabet for Needy Children was described as a "powerful comment on homelessness".[16]

In 2017 Murdoch was inducted into the Massey University's College of Creative Arts' Hall of Fame.[17]

Bibliography
  • Murdoch: The Political Cartoons of Sharon Murdoch (2016). Commentary by Melinda Johnston.
  • Three Words: An Anthology of Aotearoa/NZ Women's Comics (2016). Contributor.
  • Digital Cartoons and Sharon Murdoch (2017) by Valerie Love.
  • Munro: a cat, a mouse, a crossword clue (2018)

References
  1. "Sharon Murdoch". New Zealand Cartoon Archive. 2016. Retrieved 25 November 2016.
  2. Mann, Brittany (19 May 2014). "Catty cartoonist alone in field". Retrieved 25 November 2016 – via Stuff.co.nz.
  3. Cantlon, Polly (2011). ""In the middle of the whole thing about gender and race": Perspective in graphic design activism from the Pacific" (PDF). Design History Society Annual Conference, 7–10 September 2011. Barcelona, Spain.
  4. Wilson, Charlotte (21 August 2016). "Art, Life, Music – Sharon Murdoch". Radio New Zealand. Retrieved 25 November 2016.
  5. "5 minutes with Sharon Murdoch – Comicfest feature". Wellington City Libraries Comicfest 2015. 30 April 2015. Retrieved 25 November 2016.
  6. "Murdoch, Munro and media". Radio NZ. 23 October 2016. Retrieved 25 November 2016.
  7. "Sharon Murdoch". Potter & Burton. Retrieved 25 November 2016.
  8. Mann, Britt (18 November 2018). "At home with Cartoonist of the Year Sharon Murdoch, and her cat Munro". Stuff. Retrieved 25 January 2019.
  9. Jacobson, Julie (16 January 2017). "Wellington's Sharon Murdoch (56) draws on life experience". New Zealand Woman's Weekly: 28–29.
  10. McKee, Hannah (5 November 2016). "Cartoonist Sharon Murdoch hits booksellers list". Stuff. Retrieved 25 November 2016.
  11. "Growing up Kiwi: Sophie's story of a New Zealand childhood".
  12. 1960-, Murdoch, Sharon Gay (2016). Murdoch : the cartoons of Sharon Murdoch. Johnston, Melinda. Nelson, New Zealand. ISBN 9780947503239. OCLC 962466508.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  13. Paul, Diamond (2018). Savaged to suit : Māori and cartooning in New Zealand. New Zealand Cartoon Archive. Wellington, New Zealand. ISBN 9780992247706. OCLC 1053803863.
  14. "2018 winners – Voyager Media Awards". Voyager Media Awards. Retrieved 8 August 2018.
  15. "2017 Judges' Comments". Canon Media Awards. 2017. Retrieved 17 November 2017.
  16. "Canon Media Awards recognise ambitious, provocative Fairfax journalism". Stuff. 20 May 2016. Retrieved 25 November 2016.
  17. "Cartoonist Sharon Murdoch added to Massey University hall of fame". Stuff. Retrieved 10 May 2017.
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