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Galway Cartoon Festival announces line-up

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Alan Gardner Updated: September 1, 2024 at 7:14 am EDT 1 minute 2 comments

The Galway Cartoon Festival has announced their line-up for this year’s event. The annual festival in Galway Ireland will feature Lucie Arnoux, Dave Coverly, Ben Jennings, Malak Mattar, Will McPhail, and Dean Patterson.

The Galway Cartoon Festival was established in 2017 with the objective to “nurture, promote, and develop the art of the cartoon in Ireland, particularly as a living means of social commentary and protest” as well as “be international in outlook, forging links and exchanging ideas between our cartoon culture and the ones beyond these shores.”

Details on the featured artists:

• Lucie Arnoux – best known as an artist on the Enola Holmes comics & for her graphic-novel autobiography, Je Ne Sais Quoi
• Dave Coverly – creator of Speed Bump. He is a four time winner of Best Panel from the National Cartoonists Society.
• Ben Jennings – Cartoonist and illustrator whose work has appeared in The Guardian, The i Newspaper). He was awarded European Cartoon of the Year in 2023.
• Malak Mattar – author/illustrator of the best-selling children’s book, Sitti’s Bird: A Gaza Story. Her astonishing grayscale painting, No Words is a personal response to the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.
• Will McPhail – New Yorker cartoonist, National Cartoonists Society’s Divisional Reuben for Gag Cartoons in 2016, and British Cartoonists Association’s Young Cartoonist of the Year.
• Dean Patterson – cartoonist for Private Eye, The Phoenix, The Idler, and others.

Dean will be honored as having made a significant contribution to the art in Ireland. He will have a solo exhibit at the festival.

Tonight at the festival organizers will hold a kick-off event at Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop to announce their full festival program. The festival runs October 4-9, 2024.

Correction: this post was updated to correct the award Will McPhail received in 2016 was a National Cartoonists Society Divisional award and not The Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year as reported by Galway Cartoon Festival.