More visions of thylacines float through Lindsay Arnold’s imagined Tasmania where the elusive marsupial was adopted by the colonists, becoming a many-talented and often mythical beast. Here more thylacines emerge from the fog of the past in guises possibly probable and patently not.
Old-fashioned music with an old-fashioned twist as Cappy Crepuscule and his Rhythm Boys reprise a classic old Australian song in their uniquely idiosyncratic ‘Like it or not and see if we give a hoot’ fashion, with illustrations by Emile Mercier, Sydney’s most popular cartoonist from the 1940s to the 1980s, together with paintings and drawings by Linzee Nold and Michael Armstrong.
The Thylacine (or the Tasmanian Tiger) was Tasmania’s top predator but it was hunted to extinction with the last known of the species dying at the Hobart Zoo in 1936, seen here in this photo from the Australian National Museum. Its passing came about through farmers’ suspicions that it preyed on livestock and bounty hunters were authorised.
But what if, wonders Lindsay Arnold, instead of exterminating we’d succeeded in domesticating? Here’s the first series of moments showing the elusive marsupial in the wild and in its imagined role as a desirable companion animal. Many more to come as Lindsay Arnold’s thylacine dreamworld moves between the possible and the outright weird.
A visual interpretation of a stolen childhood. With over 100 images, Lindsay Arnold has drawn intense scrutiny to the unjust emotional and physical suffering of a sensitive boy trapped in the cruel thrall of a heartless social zeitgeist which prevailed throughout mid 20th century Australia.
No mere moral fable, this is unvarnished social history, and a cautionary tale for future generations.
What is happening here? Why did these bizarre events take place?
Continue reading Slipping Through the Cracks
More Comicular Art by L R Nold
When I began working on Dr Gumbo’s One True Jazz Comic (which appears in my second book, Empanelled — Frivolous Fables) in late 1966 in a futile attempt to maintain sanity while residing at Rosebank in New South Wales, I decide at page 2 that I’d begin a ‘side piece’ as a distraction from the horrid little jazz obsessionist’s seamy existence in Sydney.
This is it. I had intended to intersperse the Quest with earlier stories but, sad to relate, these intended stories have been perversely excised and supplanted with spurious material by malevolent ‘Printer’s Devil’ Gremlins speciously posing as the cartoonist Nold, in an apparent attempt to deride the sacred Quest.
Nold wishes to stress that this is NOT intended as yet another appalling adult colouring book, even though its 120 large pages are printed on paper ideal for such an inane pursuit.
“Altogether this is a monumental work”
— Robert Crumb
The first of two large-format glossy 288-page, limp covered Art books, Empanelled Book 1 collects Linzee’s semi-autobiographical stories from his experiences as a schoolboy, schoolteacher, itinerant drummer, actor and ‘multi-disciplinary’ artist at large, ranging from 1940s wartime Hobart, through the repressive 50s and revolutionary 60s into the 80s and 90s of the 20th century.
“Loose Life Stories” contains a total of 34 complete B&W stories from the author’s life, with chronological colour coding for easy reference, as if you care about such things.
Extras include ‘Flash Frames’ (true and imaginary encounters with Celebrities: literary, artistic, theatrical and beyond), photographs, paintings on canvas and rocks, gags, and important recondite divulgences from the SubGenius Church, all enfolded within an exquisite rainbow-edged handsome tome.
Limited edition hardback slipcased sets are available on request.
