stripbillboard

MARIO D’CRUZ,
44, TAC CLIENT

“The journey never ends,” he says. “I’ve come a long way, but I’m nowhere near the finish.”

It’s hard to imagine a more surreal
scene for a doctor than waking up in
a ward surrounded by patients that
he admitted weeks earlier. For Mario
D’Cruz, who was then a General Surgical
Registrar at the Austin Hospital, that’s
exactly what happened following a
serious car accident in 2001.

Driving to Bendigo on a weekend, Mario
lost control of his 4WD when it clipped
the road shoulder. The vehicle rolled and
the roof caved in on Mario’s side of the
cabin. “I was conscious the whole time,”
he says. A doctor travelling in the next
car pulled up to help and Mario knew
from his medical training that he had
broken his neck because he couldn’t
feel his legs.

He was flown to the Alfred and woke
up after having surgery. “Up until then,
I’d still been a doctor, but I woke up a
patient.” He was transferred to the Royal
Talbot Rehabilitation Centre, where he
spent nearly a year learning to adjust to
life as a quadriplegic. “Rehab is a place
of rebirth,” he says.

The emotional journey was difficult.
“Each morning, for an hour I’d sit outside
on my own and cry. The sorrow was very
deep. But your recovery is quicker and
easier if you try to accept rather than fight
the situation.” At rehab, he befriended
other “quaddies”, some of whom he had
admitted while working as a doctor before
the accident.
Now, Mario leads a full and fulfilling
life. He used to teach undergraduates
general surgery and now works parttime
as an investigator with the Medical
Practitioners Board. He also co-founded
STRIP with Rebecca, one of his carers,
which is an arts development project
that showcases cartoonists’ work on
a billboard outside the Corner Hotel in
Richmond. “Rebecca and I both lamented
the fact that everywhere you look, you’re
bombarded with advertisements. This is
about getting art on the wall that isn’t
commercially based.”

Mario maintains the website,
www.stripbillboard.com. “All the text on
the site has been written by me using
voice dictation, which the TAC funded.”
In addition, Mario is writing two books and
continues to DJ at friends’ weddings and
parties using a trolley he designed.
“The journey never ends,” he says. “I’ve
come a long way, but I’m nowhere near
the finish.”

http://www.tac.vic.gov.au/upload/TAC-2009-annual-report-small.pdf

*Mario and Rebecca began the project together in 2008. Mario plans to stay on as a judge however is unable to continue to maintain the website this year. - TAC Annual Report 2009

Cartoons are making a big and public splash in an unlikely medium, writes Tim Richards.

IN THE confines of Richmond's Corner Hotel bar, a group of artists and friends has gathered on a cold evening to celebrate the launch of a single cartoon.

But it's a big cartoon. Measuring four by 1.3 metres and affixed to the pub's outside wall, it's the first in a series of cartoons and comic strips to be presented by the Strip Billboard Project. Over 36 weeks, the work of 12 artists will be on the wall. At three weeks per piece, that allows plenty of time for pedestrians and drivers along Swan Street to take in each image and ponder its meaning.

Though the satirical illustration has been around since the 18th century, and the cartoon is still a fixture on newspapers' editorial pages, they've had a bumpy transition to the internet, where users click to specific stories rather than view entire pages.

Enter a new medium — the wall of a popular inner-city music venue. But why decide to feature cartoon and comic strip art in the first place? "Because of its ability to communicate clearly and concisely," says project co-organiser Rebecca Umlauf. "You don't need to know a lot about a topic to understand the angle that a cartoonist is coming from, so a cartoon is perfect for a billboard. A comic strip takes a bit more time to read, but you can still interpret it very quickly."

Ms Umlauf started thinking about the project during the 2007 federal election, when she and co-organiser Mario D'Cruz were wondering what people outside the mainstream media were thinking about the issues.

"We wanted to create some visual communication that wasn't filtered by someone with an advertising, commercial or political agenda: art, but not inside a gallery," Ms Umlauf says.

The first in the series, by Matt Bissett-Johnson, is a simple two-panel reflection on the competing scare factors of swine flu and the recession.

"Some people feel a bit harassed about the media, like everyone's trying to scare you," says Bissett-Johnson. "I wanted to give people a chance to think about that. It had to be something that could be read at a distance, and something that also had 'legs', in terms of the life of the story."

In coming weeks, Swan Street passers-by will be treated to the work of cartoonists Sarah Howell and Matt Golding, and comic strip artist Jenner, a suburban GP who produces a daily online strip, Doc Rat, outside surgery hours. The final eight artists are yet to be chosen, with applications still open at www.stripbillboard.com.

What's most remarkable about Strip Billboard is its origin outside the professional art world; neither of the organisers work in the arts industry. "So what's the attraction?" I ask Mr D'Cruz at a scuffed pub table.

"Art creates a balance to the mundane things of life," he replies. "All big messages in a public place have an agenda, but this is refreshing because it's there to make you think."

The Strip Billboard can be seen at the Corner Hotel, 57 Swan St, Richmond, until January 16. More at www.stripbillboard.com.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/arts/art-for-thoughts-sake-on-a-pub-wall/2009/05/15/1242335879394.html - The Age, May 16 2009, written by Tim Richards, image by Roger Cummins

The Courier's cartoonist John Ditchburn has taken his work down to the pub.
More precisely, he's taken it to a billboard on the wall of the Corner Hotel in Richmond.
Two of "Ditchy's" cartoons were chosen for a public art project, an initiative of Strip Billboard, the City of Yarra and the Special Projects Company.
Ditchy's cartoons will be displayed on the 1.3 by 4m billboard for three weeks before being replaced by the work of another cartoonist.
The cartoons on show will be from a combination of emerging and established cartoonists including Matt Golding, of The Age, and Andrew Weldon, whose work regularly appears in The Big Issue.
"I thought it was a really novel way to publish the work of unknown and up-and-coming cartoonists and the wide format is a really interesting way to display cartoons" Ditchy said. - Ballarat Courier, 21/9/09