It’s that wonderful time of the year again when the Museum of Australian Democracy (MoAD) open their annual fan-favourite exhibition, Behind the Lines.

Despite all the modelling, charts, graphs, metrics, numbers, and predictions that became a prominent feature of the news cycle over the past year, 2021 has proven not even the most adept among us have a crystal ball.

The 2021 exhibition’s theme, Prophecy and Chance, plays with the juxtaposition of the copious forecasting and modelling that has dominated the news cycle against the chaotic unpredictability of the year that’s been.

Documenting and highlighting the best political cartoons of the past year, there’s never a shortage of material to choose from.

Behind the Lines 2021 curator, Holly Williams, said the theme was determined after the lengthy process of assessing more than 1000 works from the past 12 months, before whittling them down to the 126 now hanging on the walls of MoAD’s lower level.

Williams said the theme of Prophecy and Chance taps into the political zeitgeist while allowing for fun and joviality through a mystic bent; with flourishes of tarot cards, astrology and palmistry dotting the exhibition.

The theme enables the exhibition to tell an engaging story through its design, with the show-stopping feature wall showcasing a giant interactive spinning wheel and a crystal ball.

“We also really want to find a way of framing the exhibition in quite a light-hearted way, because that’s what the cartoonists are doing, that’s their skill,” Williams said.

“They take these complex issues, and then they use humour to engage us with the really dense and important ideas to consider.”

MoAD director, Daryl Karp, said the exhibition sums up the year in a “very intelligent but very light-hearted” fashion.

“If I was to give one message, it’s that it’s fun,” she said. “There’s something for everyone.”

Behind the Lines is “without a doubt” the Museum’s most popular exhibition; a built-in audience of political junkies, families, and those with a good sense of humour come back year after year to see Australia’s best political cartoons.

“It’s a very valuable and light-hearted, but deeply nuanced, way to have a look at what took place last year and why you should care and laugh at it,” Karp said.

Cartoons ‘the medium of today’

Having curated the annual exhibition since 2017, Williams said its scope and remit has expanded to keep up with the ever-changing realm of political cartooning.

Last year, Behind the Lines broadened its horizons to include digital political cartoons circulated online via social media – a growing means of distribution for emerging cartoonists.

Behind the Lines 2021 features nine new artists, including a street artist, along with at least seven emerging artists whose core platform is Twitter or Instagram.

“If there was ever a time for people’s attention span to use something like political cartoons, it’s now,” Williams said.

“We don’t want to read a long form article, we want to be able to look at something, be engaged immediately, and understand the issues.”

Karp said that shift in scope has been brought on by the ever-changing media landscape; advances in technology working conversely against the decline in cartoonists employed by mainstream newspapers.

“We decided that we had to make sure we were actually capturing those voices who were using the medium differently,” she said.

Contrary to the cursory belief that online news is rendering political cartooning irrelevant, Karp said the artists’ ability to capture a news item with such brevity makes it an ideal mode for the digital age.

“This is the medium of today,” she said. “You take those really big ideas and distil them down into something that really connects with people.”

‘A lot of artists cartooned out of their skin’

In opening the exhibition, Sydney-based artist Glen Le Lievre was named Political Cartoonist of the Year.

“It was a surprise, frankly, I’m quite used to dancing like no one is watching,” he said.

“Despite the circumstances, as you can see on the walls, a lot of artists cartooned out of their skin this year.”

Part of the online revolution taking the industry by storm, he was the first artist to display a digital work at Behind the Lines in the 2020 exhibition.

Le Lievre produces two works a week in either still or animated GIF format for an online audience via subscription platform Patreon, receiving praise for his innovative use of technology and entrepreneurial flair.

“It just provides a reason for artists to keep going when they’re too stubborn or too stupid to quit or have no actual alternative,” he smiled.

“It’s exactly the same for musicians, photographers, writers.”

For the past three years, Le Lievre has created animated works, with the GIF format allowing him to execute ideas that are unworkable as stills.

“Occasionally you’ll look at a drawing and say ‘gee, this needs to move’, and in some cases you’ll have an idea that won’t work unless it can move,” he said.

“I try to restrict the animation to ideas where it’s entirely relevant, the idea is bound up in the needing to be animated.”

Behind the Lines – The Year in Political Cartoons 2021: Prophecy and Chance is now open at the Museum of Australian Democracy; moadoph.gov.au

This article is sponsored content in partnership with MoAD.

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