Sintra, Portugal

What a great honour to have been invited as a judge for the 2011 World Press Cartoon competition! We spent the last week judging entries from all over the world. Other judges included Alessandro Gatto from Italy, Cecile Bertrand from Belgium and Ralph Steadman from the UK.
It was fascinating to see the various ideas and aesthetics from the many different countries represented in the competition, particularly the work that was a product of some of the more challenging political climates.
Some themes were expressed a number of different ways. For example we saw a few images each of Julian Assange and Wikileaks, the paedophilia rampant in the Catholic church and also the religious subjugation of women in some cultures.
Ultimately the choices we made were difficult. How does one judge one piece of art to be better than another? We discussed the clarity of the idea, the merit of the drawing (or computer rendering) and the final deliverance of the idea as an image.
Ultimately I think we democratically chose some very good representations of what happened in the world in 2010. And hopefully we’ve contributed in some small way to continuing the great tradition of social and political comment that is so critical to any democratic society.
And…the competition is held every year. I would recommend that artists enter the contest if they are so inclined…the Grand Prix is twenty thousand Euros!
Thank you Rui Paulo da Cruz for inviting me