Garrick Tremain (born 1941) is a

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

cartoonist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comic book illustrators in that they produce both the literary and ...

and

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

living in Queenstown.

Biography

He has been a professional painter since 1972 and a cartoonist since 1988. Tremain has produced a cartoon six or seven days a week for various New Zealand newspapers, including the ''

Otago Daily Times The ''Otago Daily Times'' (ODT) is a newspaper published by Allied Press Ltd in Dunedin, New Zealand. The ''ODT'' is one of the country's four main daily newspapers, serving the southern South Island with a circulation of around 26,000 and a c ...

'', apart from a few months of semi-retirement from February 2007, when he produced weekly cartoons. He has been a finalist for the

Qantas Media Awards The New Zealand Newspaper Publishers’ Association awards are annual New Zealand media awards recognising excellence in the news print media. The first awards were held in 1974 giving out awards for news photography and have expanded to include ...

Cartoonist in 2000 and 2004.

Controversy

On 3 December 2019 the ''Otago Daily Times'' published a cartoon by Tremain making light of the measles epidemic in

Samoa Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa; sm, Sāmoa, and until 1997 known as Western Samoa, is a Polynesian island country consisting of two main islands (Savai'i and Upolu); two smaller, inhabited islands (Manono Island, Manono an ...

. At that point the epidemic had killed 53 people, almost exclusively small children. Many people questioned how a cartoonist could think this an appropriate subject for a cartoon, and also why the editor allowed it to be published. Some of Tremain's colleagues at the ODT spoke out against the publication of the cartoon. The Race Race Relations Commissioner

Meng Foon Meng Liu Foon (born ) is a New Zealand politician who served as the mayor of Gisborne from 2001 to 2019. Since August 2019, he has been New Zealand's race relations commissioner. He is one of a handful of people of Chinese descent to have bec ...

called the cartoon a "slap in the face" for the victims' families. The public response to the cartoon led to an apology by the ODT the same day, in which editor Barry Stewart said "The content and timing of the cartoon were insensitive, and we apologise without reservation for publishing it.” On 4 December Tremain apologised for his lack of judgment but also referred to the cartoon as a "light-hearted joke" and said he "saw nothing wrong with it". Protestors outside the ODT offices called for Tremain to be fired and Stewart to step down. Stewart told them that Tremain's position with the paper was under review, and he would not be published again until that review was complete. Tremain had previously been accused of "playing with outdated and bigoted stereotypes". On 23 December, the New Zealand Media Council ruled that Tremain's cartoon was "gratuitously hurtful and discriminatory". The Council had received 130 complaints in response to Tremain's "Samoan measles" cartoon.

Selected bibliography

*''Nursery Rhymes Mother Never Read You'' (2005) *''20 years of Garrick Tremain'' (2008)

References

External links

Garrick Tremain
- webpage 1941 births Living people New Zealand editorial cartoonists People from Queenstown, New Zealand New Zealand people of Cornish descent {{NewZealand-painter-stub