Ginger Meggs and the Missing Link: Opens this week!

This week sees the Canberra opening of the Ginger Meggs Musical, ‘Ginger Meggs and the Missing Link’ – Click the image above for details.

If you’re in Canberra tomorrow, here’s where I’ll be lurking:

8:30
Arrive Canberra Airport

9:15
Arrive Theatre
Swanson Crt Belconnen

10:00
Media call; Ginger Meggs
Jason and cast on stage
Jason, Dianna and cast

11:00
1st performance
Jason in audience

11:50
End of first act
Depart To National Library

12:00
Meeting Library
Collection tour and Lunch at Bookplate

14:00
Radio Interview
2xx Griffin Centre Civic
Presenter: Sylvie Stern art’n soul with Vivienne, Jason and Joshua

15:15
Radio Interview
ABC 666 Wakefield Ave Dickson
Presenter: Chris Coleman with Vivienne, Jason and Joshua

15:45
Radio Interview
2CC via landline at MFE

16:00
National Museum, Meeting with Curator
Greg & Jason 30 National Circuit, Forrest

18:15
Pick up -Opening GM
Forrest Apartments to Belconnen Theatre

18:30
Arrive Theatre
Swanson Crt Belconnen

19:00
Opening night show
Belconnen Theatre

21:00
Opening Concludes
Post show drinks

Ginger Skies

(From News.com.au)
RESIDENTS of Sydney and parts of New South Wales have awoken to scenes likened to “armageddon”, with limited visibility and orange skies – and Queenslanders will soon get much of the same.
Large areas have been shrouded in a blanket of red dust as the two states experience severe winds and unseasonably warm temperatures. Sydneysiders woke up to eerie red skies this morning, which is expected to clear later today.

News is coming through of a possible cause for the red skies…

return to www.gingermeggs.com

Ginger Meggs: The Musical!

I’ll be heading to Canberra next week for the opening of the Ginger Meggs musical “Ginger Meggs and the Missing Link”.

Details below – click the image to enlarge. Come along!

Ginger Meggs Doll

My friend Ivan Dixon just came across this doll in an art exhibition in Canberra recently.

UNKNOWN ARTIST

Working Australia 1960s

Ginger Meggs doll c.1960
wool and acrylic
43.2 (h) x 27.4 (w) x 9.1 (d) cm
Gift of Diana Cameron 1988
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
NGA 1988.452

‘A knitted toy of Australia’s most beloved comic strip character is available for the first time. He’s bound to be the most popular present you could give at any time, and he’s definitely a new toy.’[1]

Ginger Meggs is indisputably one of Australia’s most popular and enduring fictional characters. From his first appearance in the inaugural 1921 Us fellers comic strip, the rakish redhead appears to have been highly desirable. Those who could not afford commercially manufactured dolls sought an alternative in knitting patterns which featured instructions to create ‘your very own’ Ginger Meggs as early as the 1930s. So let’s start: take some 4-ply Super Scotch Fingering wool (3oz red, 2oz pink, 1oz black, 1oz white), and a pair of No 10 needles…

A squishy, floppy infant slumped in a vitrine masquerading as soft sculpture? Is this a quirky joke? Ginger Meggs is somewhat slapdash, yet lovingly made, but he looks out of place―especially in a ‘boutique’ of multiples and other small sculpture, in an art gallery surrounded by the work of internationally renowned artists. Wild red hair ablaze, mischievous Ginger looks at us with a mad look in his hand-stitched eyes. He wears his signature vest―black at the front and striped like a football jersey at the back―but where on earth are his pants? Cast on 60 stitches, using red wool, knit 3, knit 2, knit 8, repeat ….

The humble doll makes no grand artistic statements. It represents the continuation of the ‘make do’ attitudes which have breathed life into Australian folk and popular arts during times of hardship and poverty. In contemporary practice we see the revival of the knitted toy. In Luke Roberts’s All souls of the revolution 1976–94, over 300 soft toys are tacked to the wall in the manner of insects in a museum, a fate which Ginger Meggs has avoided by his status as an Australian folk object rather than a cast-off toy.

Niki van den Heuvel
Exhibition Assistant, International Art
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

[1] Sheelah Lyle, Knitted toys: introducing the popular Ginger Meggs, Gerry the Giraffe, Gwenda the Doll, Humpty Dumpty, Rajah the Elephant and Harry the Horse, Associated Newspapers Ltd, Sydney, [no date]; the instructions are from this pattern

The Meggs Billycart Derby!

The Meggs Billy Cart Derby has a new date – Sunday 16th August 2009, and a NEW VENUE – Georgiana Terrace, Gosford. Once again Gosford will be transformed into a race track with billy carts in all shapes and sizes taking over the streets.

In its third year the United Way Central Coast Community Chest’s biggest event aims to raise funds for local charities.

Designed as a fun old fashioned family day out, this year for the first time kids as young as 5 can enter the race.
There are more race categories and different rules to make it easier to make the cart and enter the race.
Download the application form.

There are great prizes to be won, and if you enter your school there is even a chance to win a cash prize of $1000.

Market stalls, food, entertainment and lots of activities for all of the family will line the streets for the City’s great community event.

The Meggs Billy Cart Derby; will have a special guest in attendance this August when Jason Chatfield; the Ginger Meggs cartoonist will hand over the perpetual trophy – a hand drawn caricature by the late James Kemsley – to the winner of the corporate race category.

Chatfield took over writing and drawing the iconic internationally syndicated comic strip Ginger Meggs in 2007, becoming the strip’s fifth artist, succeeding James Kemsley (a close friend and mentor) who also approved the use of the Meggs name for the Gosford billy cart derby. Ginger Meggs appears today in over 120 papers in 32 countries worldwide.

More info at: http://www.themeggs.com.au/

Ginger Meggs The Role Model

A lovely read from a long-time fan on the “70 Plus and Still Kicking” blog.

Click the image to read more.

An original Sunbeams cover of Ginger Meggs from the 20's

James Kemsley Honoured at the 2009 Reuben Awards

I recently traveled to New York and LA with good friend and eldest son of the late James Kemsley, Jed Kemsley whom accepted the coveted Golden T-Square, awarded by the National Cartoonists’ Society. Report below:

Courtesy Southern Highland News

Notes on James Kemsley by a bystander

Jed Kemsley passed this link on today – a nice piece on the late James Kemsley OAM. A great man and a truly remarkable observer.

“Being still pre-post-modern, I don’t know about ‘sense-moral’ or ‘wisdom phrase’. But I do know that snatches of conversation are glimpses of life. And that the best cartoonists, like the late James Kemsley, who for so long breathed life into Ginger Meggs, are masters of life’s glimpses. They abstract from reality as a philosopher might. It’ll do me that these gentle glimpses are offered. We’re all passers by. We all need the insights.”

Read more here: http://makingaustralia.abc.net.au/_Notes-on-James-Kemsley-by-a-bystander/blog/240409/73526.html

Ginger Meggs Musical: “Ginger Meggs and the Missing Link”

The Ginger Meggs musical Ginger Meggs and the Missing Link will be performed for a season of 12 performances over the 30th September to 7th October 2009 at the Belconnen Community Theatre.

Email manager@mfe.org.au for booking information
T:02 6230 7190 F: 026257 8088
www.mfe.org.au

___________

Contact David Spicer if you would like to perform the Ginger Meggs musical.

David Spicer Productions
E-mail: dspice@ozemail.com.au
Phone/Fax in Australia: 02 9371 8458

Jason Chatfield interview on Comics Coast to Coast

Ginger Meggs cartoonist Jason Chatfield was the guest for this week’s episode of Comics Coast to Coast.

You can listen to the episode online at: http://tinyurl.com/aew5s3