Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell on the Post-Truth World

English political cartoonist Steve Bell will speak at the University of Auckland on Thursday 16 March.

Steve is probably best known for the daily strip called If..., which has appeared in The Guardian newspaper since 1981, and since the mid-1990s he has also been that newspaper's principal editorial cartoonist.

Steve is a graduate in Fine Arts and Film from the University of Leeds. He first established a reputation with the cartoon strip 'Maggie's Farm' – a ferocious serial attack on the government of Margaret Thatcher – which appeared in London's Time Out from 1979.

At The Guardian, Steve soon began to work as an editorial and political cartoonist alongside the New Zealand-born Les Gibbard, whom he succeeded as principal cartoonist in 1994. In addition to cartooning for the New Statesman, New Society, Private Eye, Leveller, and other magazines, Steve has made short animated films for the BBC and Channel 4.

A fearless scourge of the political establishment, he is a master of political caricature in the tradition of Hogarth, Gillray and Rowlandson. Drawing freely on the history of western art, he creates images whose satiric ferocity is matched by a richly allusive wit.

Steve has been named as the United Kingdom's Cartoonist of the Year four times, and holds honorary degrees from five British universities.

The Observer once named him - alongside Ricky Gervais – as one of the 50 funniest acts in Britain.

His talk, Abusing Power: The Cartoonist in a Post-Truth World, is on Thursday 16th March, 6pm at the Fisher & Paykel Appliances Auditorium, Owen G Glenn Building, City Campus.

Registration is required: abusingpower.eventbrite.com

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