Odd Mr Sprod
Author
In the summer of 1938-39, when cartoonists were highly sought after as social commentators, 19-year-old George Sprod left his family home in Adelaide and headed to Sydney on a push bike in search of a newspaper job.
Leaving his family with a simple note in the letterbox saying ‘there will be one less mouth to feed’, the boy whose teachers couldn’t stop him from doodling all over his school books began a journey which led him to becoming one of Australia’s best cartoonists.
Before he could begin his cartoonist career however, Sprod enlisted in the Army and was captured by the Japanese in 1942. He spent three-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war and during this time Sprod began to practise his own style of art and humour in direct contrast to his abysmal reality.
Following his time at war, he had some success in Australia before setting off for London where he made his mark at the British satire magazine Punch as ‘that Odd Mr Sprod’.
Now, his nephew is curating an exhibition of Sprod’s work. David
Sprod, a UniSA student who completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts last year
and is now undertaking an Honours degree in Curatorial Practice and Art
Theory, says it’s a huge coup to curate the exhibition.
"The exhibition has come about because my uncle left a lifelong personal collection of cartoons and journals to my father when he died," David says.
"The quality and historical importance of the collection demand that something be done with it. So I submitted a proposal that I curate and research an exhibition for the Migration Museum and this was accepted.
"It is a huge achievement for an Honours student to curate a significant exhibition in a public gallery that runs over four months.
"This accolade is a great testament to educational standards and skills fostered by the University of South Australia."
The exhibition catalogue states that "Sprod draws with a simple black outline - single frame cartoons: humorous drawings for publication in the print media intended to entertain the reader with or without a caption".
His nephew has certainly taken on Sprod’s artistic flair and after curating this exhibition and finishing his Honours, he plans to return to painting and undertake further curatorial projects.
The ‘Cartoons by that Odd Mr Sprod’ exhibition will be held at the Migration Museum in Adelaide from October until January. It will then hopefully travel to Sydney and Hobart, and may also tour to London where George Sprod is quite well known.