Here’s to Bill Leak, and redrawing perceptions

After a life that took him all over the world, this newspaper’s legendary cartoonist Bill Leak finally settled on the NSW central coast.

Johannes Leak at the Bill Leak Gallery in Ettalong, which from this weekend will show some of the works by his father Bill. Picture: Nikki Short

After a life that took him all over Australia, to Europe and the US, this newspaper’s legendary cartoonist Bill Leak finally settled on the central coast of NSW.

His first home-cum-studio in Hardys Bay nestled into the bush; his final home at Wagstaffe gazed across the bay towards Ettalong, where his son Johannes, who last year took his late father’s old job, now lives.

Bill loved the earthiness, the honesty, of the coast; he often said he felt at home among its people, close in distance but far in mindset from the inner-city elites.

Fitting, then, that many of Bill’s celebrated artworks should end up on the crisp white walls of a tiny gallery on Ettalong’s Ocean View Road, just down from the pub and the pie shop. Johannes will formally open the gallery this weekend, with 30 of his father’s sometimes charming, sometimes vulgar, but always exquisitely drawn caricatures for sale.

“Dad’s death was about as ­unplanned as you can get,” Johannes says of Bill’s sudden heart attack in March 2017, “and his work was on walls, in drawers, in storerooms gathering dust, in filing cabinets, everywhere.”

It’s been an arduous, if enjoyable, labour of love to sort through and itemise the collection, ­because Bill kept pretty well everything he hadn’t sold over a 40-year career: lightning sketches, pencil roughs, ink drawings, watercolours, oils; there is no shortage of material to fill the ­gallery.

“It’s just lovely to have these works in a permanent ­fixture,” says Johannes, “out of the drawers and in front of people. For those who loved his art it’s an opportunity to revisit some old favourites.”

And perhaps buy one. The caricatures for sale in this first ­selection — it’s Johannes’s intention to change them every two or three months — are primarily from the 1990s, and are an aide-memoire to anyone interested in the politics of the period.

They are beautifully executed, vibrant colours below layers of ink-spattered acetate that was for a while Bill’s trademark.

Bill Leak.

“I’d like to offer a broad range, from sketches up to finished works,” he says, “even prints, so there’s something for everybody.”

But there’s another motive to the gallery’s creation, one that will resonate with many of The Australian­’s readers.

“Over recent years Dad was pictured as a polar­ising figure,” says Johannes, referring to the ­social-media warriors who swarmed all over Twitter to ­accuse Bill of racism, fascism and any other “ism” they could hang on him.

The savagely witty portraya­l of some conservative icons in this exhibition might give them pause.

“I would love to re-establish him as an artist of immense range, and with a terrific sense of fun,” Johannes says.

“He might have changed some of his outlooks over the years, but what I want to present is how, day to day, he ­engaged with Australia and ­reflected public life over more than three decades.”

As an art exhibition it’s modest but beautiful; but if it also helps visitors to rethink some of their misconceptions about his father, it will achieve more than Johannes could have hoped for.

For further details, visit billleakgallery.com