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Yesterday I was honored to do the inaugurational speech of O-Sekoer’s personal exhibition in his home town Torhout.
To be honest I was impressed: by the works (of course), by their presentation (perfect as expected) but what impressed me the most was the crowd: family (90-years old mum and 1 month old granddaughter), friends, cartoon lovers and even 2 Syrian Refugees…. Hundreds of people all very proud on ‘their O-Sekoer’, THE great artist/cartoonist, but also a very humble local (or global?) man with a great heart.
As Mrs. Lieselotte Denolf (elderman in Torhout) said in her welcome word: ‘we all say we sympathise with the refugees escaping from war, but who invites them to come and drink a coffee at home, I don’t, but Luc he does.’
It illustrates that the work of O-Sekoer is the result of social engagement. As no other he invites the public to think, to create your own personal opinion about themes as war, poverty, climate change, terrorism, ….. Themes that are important to him and at the same time he is able to stay very objectif, he only gives us the facts, he doesn’t take position… But we do by our own reaction on the cartoon.
For this exhibition O-Sekoer reframed each of his cartoons, he used old frames, old paper, fabrics … Each work has it’s own personality: an old stamp, the prize of the book marked on the first page, the fingerprint of the artist. He’s playing with the time, he forces us to take a step back and have a secund look.
This is really a must see exhibition because I completely agree by these words of Jan Oplinus:
‘I’ve seen many cartoon exhibitions before, but this time the artist did not only surprise us with his outstanding cartoons, but also with the unique framing of the works. By doing so, the cartoons, already being of a high artistic quality, were exalted into another level.’
And the catalogue … Well the first two copies were for the two Syrian refugees…
These pics are made by: Geert Vanoverschelde
More information: http://o-sekoer.blogspot.be
Saskia
The cartoon festival of Lebbeke is a small Belgian festival organized by a small group of volunteers with a warm heart. It is allways great to see how some people achieve to organize cartoon contests by hard working and further not a lot of financials. They deserve respect, because they do it for the pleasure of the art form that is cartooning.
The winner of this years edition was O-Sekoer, with his cartoon about refugees.
ZYGMUNT ZARADKIEWICZ (2nd), FRANK HOFFMANN (3th) and MIROSLAV BARVIRCAK (4th), the ‘CURIEUS’ prize was for the Belgian HAIDARI NATALIJA
Doede Okkema, Vladimir Kazanevsky and Jean Van Spittael got an honorable mention.
And I was happy to see some Belgian cartoonists again
On Saturday the 26th of September we had the opening ceremony of the Polish cartoonist and Illustrator Jerzy Gluszek and a selection of Croatian cartoonist and this in the presence of the Croatian Ambassador in Belgium
Just have a look at some nice pics of that evening
More info: http://www.ecc-kruishoutem.be/Gluszek_ENG.html
The week before the ‘Cartoons from Belgium’ exhibition was inaugurated in Zagreb, and in the presence of our own ambassador:
Twee maanden (van 23 tot 26 april) voor de cartoonhetze in Antwerpen werden op de Week Van De Amateurkunsten in Schoten ook al mohammedcartoons tentoongesteld. In containers kwamen daar verschillende kunstvormen aan bod. In de cartoon-container werd één wand gereserveerd voor “de cartoon in de geschiedenis”. Behalve werken over onderandere de koude oorlog, Leopold II en de maanlanding waren ook enkele mohammedcartoons uit de Jyllands-posten opgehangen, met een ruimte waar de bezoekers hun mening kwijt konden.
Voor méér dan 90 procent waren de cartoons geen probleem.
De meest populaire cartoon bleek er één van Canary Pete te zijn:
En ook deze twee cartoons konden op héél wat bijval rekenen:
Bij de Hitlercartoon met Bart De Wever was er heel wat meer controverse en soms verhitte discussie. Wat eigenlijk de bedoeling was.
Dit is een verslagje van cartoonist Danny Maes.
Alvast bedankt voor de bijdrage!
From May 29th till June 1st a Belgian delegation of cartoonists and ECC members was invited by Andrus Tamm, chief-editor of the Estonian humour magazine “Pilkaja” and organizer of the yearly international cartoon contest, to come to Tallinn, Estonia, to attend the opening ceremony of the exhibition “Cartoons from Belgium”.
The exhibition is located in the Rahvarinde Muuseum (Museum of the Popular Front, dedicated to a political organization that was the key to Estonia’s independence in 1991) and shows a selection of a hundred cartoons of Belgium’s most popular and meritorious contest cartoonists (Tony Houbrechts, Nikola Hendrickx, Luc Vermeersch, Ludo Goderis, Luc Descheemaeker, Constantin Sunnerberg, Jan Dufour, Luc Vernimmen, Norbert Van Yperzeele and Stefaan Provijn). Also a few Estonian cartoonists like Hugo Hiibus, Priit Koppel, and others, were present and it was great to meet them. Although not many people showed up at the opening, we are sure that the exhibition will be a great success. The Rahvarinde Muuseum is located in the center of the city (at Freedom Square), and the exhibition is open during the whole summer.
In the evening we all celebrated the 50th edition of Andrus’s humour magazine “Pilkaja” in one of the many cellar bars of Tallinn. And of course, besides a few drinks and some tasty food snacks, an evening with cartoonist wouldn’t be one without drawing cartoons and caricatures.
The remaining time of the weekend we spent by wandering in the beautiful picturesque Old Town, enjoying the nice weather and the many sidewalk cafés.
We had a great time in Tallinn, and we are looking forward to read the article about the exhibition in the next edition of “Pilkaja”.
Saskia, Fernand, Tony and Nikola
And a reflection by Tony in Dutch:
‘Terug geflitst naar de middeleeuwen, naar onze honderd kartoens, die niet aan de galg maar onder de grond hangen hier in Tallinn.
Boven de grond zijn er feesten. We lopen er over de koppen. Vooral over keikoppen die een toeristische aanslag plegen op enkel en ruggengraat.
Hotsend en botsend door de kleine gezellige staatjes zoeken we kerken, musea, moskee en andere gelegenheden op.
Kon ik nu maar vliegen.
Moet spontaan denken aan het mezennestje van Gezellige Guido.
“Een mezennestje is uitgebroken,
dat in een wilgentronk
gedoken,
met vijftien eikes blonk;
ze zitten in de boom te spelen,
tak-op, tak-af,
Tall-inn, tall-uit,
en amen
Estland is weerom ijle en uit.”’
Some photos of the inauguration of the ‘Cartoons from Belgium’ exhibition in Tallinn – Estonia.
Last week a delegation of 7 members of the ECC went for a trip to the fantastic city of Berlin. The purpose of the trip was to be present at the awards ceremony of 6th International Cartoon Competition of Berlin 2015 with as theme “SPYING”. This ceremony took place on Friday the 5th June, but the ECC already arrived on Wednesday in order to combine the ceremony with a pleasant city trip. And we were very Lucky ; plenty of sunshine, nice and vivid neighbourhood of the hotel at Rosenthaler Platz with cosy bars, cafés and restaurants. For the cultural fans, Berlin is heaven ; there are lots of museums of which many are free and very modern like the Topographie of terrors and the Memorial of the murdered Jews of Europe. We recommend a free guided city walk in order to explore all the features of the city. However we do not recommend the Mauermuseum next to Checkpoint Charlie ; it’s old fashioned and a real tourist trap.
Friday evening we took the underground to arrive at Kurfürsterdamm 207.
It’s a shopping mall in which there’s also the museum ‘The Story of Berlin’. The Manager of this museum, Mr. Bernhard SCHÜTTE, was so kind to offer the foyer of his museum as the location for the awards ceremony. We were a bit ashamed that we didn’t visit this museum, but on the other hand this is a very good excuse to come back again to Berlin.
Before it started we were welcomed by Valeriu KURTU, who organised this event together with his enthusiastic team consisting of Paul GROSS, (Communications), Rais KHALILOV (Media Design) and Michael RUFMANN (Programming) and let’s not forget to mention his lovely wife Julia who provided us with tasteful snacks and drinks.
Michael FISCHER, know from Jazzradio Berlin, announced the prize winners. The second prize winner : Dieter HACKEBELL from Germany received the Silver He-Goat award. And later on the evening also the third prize winner arrived. We appreciated much the live-music that evening ; a mix of Hungarian folk songs brought by 2 extravagant ladies. The cartoons of all the prize winners as well as a selection of the best cartoons were exposed in a temporary exhibition in the foyer of the museum and the shopping mall itself. Among them also some Belgians as Luc Vernimmen, Norbert Van Yperzeele, Cost., Tony Tasco, … .
Further on that night we were invited for a party in the KURTUKUNST Gallery. Valeriu KURTU together with his wife Julia and his team spoiled us again with good food and enough drinks. We exchanged some cartoon books and experiences in the organisation of cartoon contests. We came to the conclusion that it is always difficult to find the necessary funds in order to make it happen. That’s why we hope that there will be a 7th edition of the Berlin cartoon contest and we call up on everybody who would like to sponsor the next edition. In that case the ECC wird zurück kommen !
More information: http://www.cartoonberlin.de
Dominique Termote
A sunny Sunday afternoon – next to the beach of Hofstade – we attent the opening ceremony and inauguration of the 4th international festival of sports cartoons of the Sportimonium museum place. The theme this year was ‘Cycling as a sport’.
For us, Belgians, ‘Cycling’ is one of the most popular sports, but in a lot of other countries cycling is rather rare. So it was a big surprise to see that 363 cartoonist from 60 different countries did take part in this 4th edition of the biennial contest.
I was a jury member, together with a Belgian Champion Cycling (Heidi Van De Vijver), 2 retired sports journalists (Rik Van Walleghem – also director of the Center of the Tour of Flanders and president of the jury Mark Vanlombeek, Thomas Ameye (director of WIEMU), Ghi Barbé of the sportimonium and Constantin Sunnerberg (cartoonist and winner of the 3th edition) and it must be said: it was hard work to select the winning cartoons.
As president of the jury Mark Vanlombeek said at his inaugurational speech: ‘of course we did expect some doping cartoons, but a syringue in the butt, really shows a lack of creativity by a lot of the participating cartoonists.’ And I can only agree with that conclusion.
Finally the jury decided on the folowing prize winners:
- Azadnia Mahmood (Iran)
- Vladimir Kazanevsky (Ukraïne)
- Luc Vernimmen (Belgium)
Unfortunatly the prize winners were not present, but we had a great time and had a chat with some Belgian cartoonists as Richie, Patrick Heymans, Geert Van Belleghem and Paul Kempeneers.
And as great sportive people, we were offered a healthy reception with fresh fruits, smoothies (to mix them we had to ride on a bicycle first), water and … rice pastries – to keep our sugar level high enough just before the final.
The small but beautiful exhibition can be seen untill the 1st of October at the Sportimonium:
http://www.sportimonium.be/nl/activiteit/cartoonale-2015-wielersport
Last friday I was happy to do the inaugurational speech of the first personal show of a great Belgian cartoonist: Nikola Hendrickx or IOA.
The exhibition was organized by the organisation IHA (international humour in Art) of Boechout.
It was a great evening, with fantastic works from Nikola, a lot of people attending the opening ceremony, music and the, as always, perfect receptions with drinks and fingerfood made by Tim.
The ECC contributed to the exhibition by publishing the exhibition catalogue with 50 of the works.
Just enjoy the great work of Nikola and also have a look on his website.
These pictures of Lejon De Borger gives a nice impression of the great evening.
The exhibition can be visited till the 19th of April during the activities in ‘theater Vooruit’ in Boechout, St.-Bavoplein 17 and on the 19 april 2015 from 13 till 17 h. Or on appointement: iha@yucom.be
Follow Nikola IOA Hendrickx also on Facebook to see all his recent work.