Toons 4 Wildlife

Wednesday to Sunday, 10 am – 4 pm until November 22
Coffs Harbour – National Cartoon Gallery @ The Bunker

Caricaturist Mark Tippett has spent a lifetime sketching faces and places but needed to draw on the help of his mates to make his latest project a success. Mark is the man behind the Toons 4 Wildlife exhibition at the National Cartoon Gallery @ The Bunker that is showing works by some of Australia’s best cartoonists and raising funds through an online auction to help the work of the wildlife carers at WIRES. It was last summer’s devastating bushfires that sparked the idea in Mark’s mind to stage the exhibition of works inspired by the plight of our native animals.

“I’m an animal lover and I can remember the moment when I first had the idea of staging a fundraising exhibition,” Mark says. “It was when I saw the TV images of a tiny koala” – dubbed Tiny Arse – climbing onto a fire truck, trying to get a drink or just get out of the way of the fire.

“I wanted to call the exhibition ‘Tiny Arse’ but people told me that probably wasn’t a good idea!”

With the help of his colleagues in the Australian Cartoonists’ Association, Mark was able to gather about 90 works that are on display. The exhibition was launched by the man who became synonymous with the bushfire crisis, former NSW Rural Fire Service commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons.

Toons 4 Wildlife will be on display until November 22. The online auction will run for the same period, with signed originals by the artists up for sale.