2025 - CATS - CARTOON MUSEUM
The exhibition ran from 5 April to 7 September 2025.
The exhibition featured 60 - 80 cartoons and comics featuring cats, including works by significant and well-known artists such as Louis Wain, Ronald Searle, Heath Robinson, Wendy Eastwood, Simon Tofield, Gemma Correll, Natty Peterkin, Hunt Emerson and myself.
On display were favourite characters including Garfield and Bagpuss. The exhibition looked at various depictions of cats and their nature. Throughout the exhibition there was also text, images and video highlighting the work Battersea Dogs and Cats Home does.
2023 - BLACK - JOHN HANSARD GALLERY
The exhibition ran in the month of October to coincide with Black History Month.
With the help of funding from the Arts Council, I worked with the author to recreate his life story in the form of a graphic novel. The pages first appeared in the online comic ‘Aces Weekly’ which is published by David Lloyd, the co-creator of V for Vendetta.
A graphic novel was then successfully published and distributed by Soaring Penguin Press. A range of products was also created to accompany the book. We then held an exhibition at the Cartoon Museum in London and created a mixed media campaign to support the event. We followed this up by partnering with Black History Month South to put on a much larger exhibition at the John Hansard Gallery. This was supported by a city wide poster campaign and a social media campaign.
Quotes from industry figures:
BLACK is very absorbing, and incredibly and painfully honest. No holds barred, no subject or person off limits, yet appropriately drawn with suitable artistic restraint. Great visual storytelling. It’s a valuable record of life in the 70s. A social history text of the era couldn’t bring it alive like this. I especially liked the satirical graphics - the use of adverts from the era. The comedy matches the dry humour in the words. As far as I know, no one in the UK has lifted the lid on teenage life in the 70s by portraying it like this in comics. I’d thought about doing something similar set in the 1960s from time to time, but figured that it would be impossible to find an artist who would want to draw social realism with such enthusiasm and insight. And most UK artists prefer to draw fantasy, which is fair enough. The fact that Tobias and Anthony teamed up so successfully is impressive. I know from first hand just how demanding that must have been and how many artists would have had problems with the visuals. Anthony’s dedication to bringing the story alive is the equivalent of a film director like Ken Loach dramatising the lives of ordinary people and making them into the everyday heroes that so many are. Tobias is one of them.
Pat Mills Writer – editor, creator of 2000AD/Judge Dredd
“Powerful, thought-provoking, disturbing, but ‘Black’ is positively inspiring, too.”
John Freeman - Comics editor, writer and founder of Down the Tubes.
“Comics can tell the stories that need to be told and to be heard. I've been keenly following the development of 'Black', Tobias Taitt's unflinching memoir, illustrated by Anthony Smith, about his harrowing struggles and inspiring survival through family traumas and Britain's social care system.”
Paul Gravett – Comics historian, curator and activist
“BLACK is an insightful autobiographical account of one man’s journey as a young black boy growing up in Seventies’ England. It captures the isolation, resilience, and grit, as Tobias Taitt navigates a system stacked against him. Beautifully illustrated by Anthony Smith, the duality of words and imagery is captivating. It reminded me of my own complex journey growing up in tough East London in the ’70s and ’80s. BLACK is a story that resonates and is a powerful testament to one’s ability to rise up, despite whatever barriers are presented. A must read to have on your shelf. Loved it.”
Stephen Anthony Davids – Artist
A beautiful evocation of a horrible past. A hidden, secret social history that many people would like to pretend never happened. BLACK spares the reader nothing, the way its protagonist was not spared the violence, terror and alienation of being born in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Tobias Taitt’s story will appal you, told through Anthony Smith’s precise visuals of a bygone era - if only it was gone. This isn’t a fun read. But this graphic memoir will keep you in its grip until the last page. It might not let go even then.
Woodrow Phoenix – author, Rumble Strip, Crash Course, She Lives, and Nelson
