03 September 2010
Image courtesy of the Sprod Family
Recently the Kings Cross Library and Arts Guild, in conjunction with Kings Cross Council, The City of Sydney and the Sprod Family hosted the opening of a very odd gallery exhibition.
The art featured was drawings, all with some sort of current day commentary – that’s not odd.
The drawings were encased in glass frames and hung throughout the library, taking the browser on a tour throughout the exhibit – that’s not odd either.
What’s odd is the man behind the drawings – that odd Mr. George Sprod, famous cartoonist and commentator of the 1940’s.
An assortment of young and old turned out to listen to a recount of George Sprod’s life and times delivered by his nephew (also the curator of the exhibition) Dr. David Sprod.
Who was Mr Sprod?
If you ask your average Generation X “who was George Sprod” you can expect a blank stare and a lack of comprehension in return. However if you pose the same question to most Sydney-siders over the age of 30 a corner of their mouth might raise in a slight smile accompanied by a chuckle.
George Sprod left his Adelaide home at the age of 17 on a bicycle, literally. He pinned a note to the fridge informing his family it was “one less mouth to feed” and peddaled for Sydney. As a child Sprod was always sketching and jotting things in notebooks, the exhibition holds more than 15 such notebooks, the earliest ones nearly illegible in a child’s chicken scratch.
George was never much at school and always wanted to be a cartoonist. Unfortunately when he got to Sydney he found an indifference to his style of drawing – everyone was publishing political cartoons, “George drew gags” narrated his nephew.
Eventually George found work at the ultra popular Woman’s Day, more than 5 of the full colour covers done by Sprog hang in the exhibition.
Smoke-oh and Changi
George enlisted at a rather young age (before one was technically allowed to enlist..) and went off to war. Soon captured George was sent to a Prisoner of War camp in Changi. Making the amusing best of situations was always George’s forte and he soon became the editor and main contirubting artist to the POW camp’s magazine – Smoke oh!
Completing a full book while in the POW camp experience in Changi George returned to Australia when the war ended.
Punch
The magazine of the day in Europe was Punch! and every artist was dying to find a place inside it’s covers. Ever the self-promoter George made his way to England and to Punch!’s head office with 4 of his drawings. He left the initial meeting with none, a feat never heard of in Punch! history.
Punch gave George an outlet and a vehicle to express his witty and observant sense of humour until
Kings Cross Arts Guild 