samwallman

early autumn

hey commeroids. sorry this is late coming through, had a death in the family and it ended up hitting me for six. doubling down on efforts for a second safe injecting room in the bastards honour <3 "i've never encountered a user who wasn't trying to thrive"

details from a new project with La Trobe uni that will come out soon

Also been flat-out finishing the first issue of ‘Townsville Watchouse Experience’, a new four-part old school floppy comic series I’m making in collaboration with my old friend Kyle Magee, through Glom Press. I just sent off the final artwork for the first issue which is gonna come out soon, here is the cover and a few pages:

below is a new piece for Overland, about the limits on striking, which i repeat for the millionth time are in australia down NINETY SEVEN PERCENT from 1970s levels 🤮 

I tried to draw that one in the style of the old International Workers of the World cartoons from a hundred years ago, which are still so on point. enjoyed working Mr Block into the piece, he is a recurring character from labour cartoons over the last hundred or so years, who represents a cucked worker with false consciousness, if you're a cartoonist u shld draw him tooooo keep him alive

old depiction of him from decades and decades ago: 

Done a bunch of pieces in support of Palestine as previously unimaginable horrors continue just completely unchecked, with the daily death toll now having surpassed literally any other 21st century conflict

the above ‘vote for palestine’ piece was intended to hype some good candidates in the MEAA (media and arts union) elections.

I took the text off it and put a generic version of it on my website as a high resolution free downloadable file, if you are involved in any election campaigns in the future feel free to amend and use it, pls just send me a msg before u do so, i don’t want it being deployed by some cooker who is randomly correct on Palestine but wrong about everything else haha, if such a person exists

made the below poster and banner design as part of the media unions effort to fundraise for the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate. the MEAA raised $10k off their push, not bad.

donated a handful prints to APHEDA to auction off for Palestinian solidarity. APHEDA is an international aid organisation started by the australian union movement in the 80s (actually started in response to persecution of Palestine way back then). they’re an excellent organisation well worth looking into, they don’t just provide aid they actually equip workers in different regions to fight for themselves it rules.

My other union the MUA sold off this print as part of the Tas Bull International Aid auction for Palestine at the maritime union conference on Friday, it sold for fucken $25k wld u belief.
I usually don’t heaps prioritise fundraising since it often doesn’t feel very transformative / feels more like charity alot of the time / selling boyscout cookies / not structural enuf or smthng / and cos so many other parts of the left do very little *except* fundraise??? but fucken hell things are so desperate with Palestine lets do whatever we can wherever we can i spose?????? might try and think of some more ways to contribute in that way.

I am trying to get some mugs made up for patreon supporters, wanna get the above new design printed on these old school diner mugs, fingers crossed it comes together:

In the end i think i will just make them available to patreon supporters, i dont wanna fully become fucken Kmart lol

i have also started drawing goofy comics at work, partly as a way to keep some kind of diary, and yeh as a way to pass the time. also cos it’s boring just drawing ranty political stuff all the time, nice to leave a bit of room for self expression even if it’s just drawing dumb workplace chats. 

There’s also some cynical part of my brain where i hope that if i draw more accessible, playful pieces like these, then more ppl might arrive at the more political drawings. Craven!!!!!

Drew this for my dear friend Hollie for her bday :

keep ringing the bell, cunce!!!!!!!!! <3<3<3

ps -- I have finally mailed some gratitude out to everyone now, pls let me know if u haven’t received anything in the last 6 months or so, that includes new supporters xooooo

above drawing by Bailey Sharp, graphic by Workers Art Collective

january

hey mates. it’s definitely HAPPENING - here’s some undeniably good AI art that’s floating around, stuff that i think humans wld rly struggle to do ourselves, and that are actually pushing art into interesting new places. i half hate to see it but credit where its due i spose!!!!!! 😅

there's also this amazing page on Instagram full of AI images making fun of the inner north of melbourne i'm obsessed

there’s also this extremely popular Palestinian guy who does all his political cartoon kinda art using AI, oop. full respect to him ofc, not rly my kind of aesthetic but noteworthy i reckon, and definitely helping that struggle. it’s definitely all....... happenninng. will leave it to smarter ppl to draw conclusions about AI and art cos honestly i dont rly know exactly how the fuck i feel about it all !!!!!!

“Get yourself a labour movement so big and powerful that it doesn’t matter who is in government” is a line that sums up a lot of people’s thinking about worker power. my friend Rosie Scroggie has a good way of seeing the world, and of speaking it into being.

pls don’t share this drawing around, it will be published formally by Overland.org.au soon

An engaged and militant union movement can act as a safety mechanism against tyranny, and could secure us a greatly expanded form of democracy. some positive reforms have been passed by right wing governments when they were forced into it by a groundswell of labour organising. and on the flipside, a lot of terrible legislation has been passed by notionally “left” parties, when the labour movement was busy sleeping. the takeaway, i think, is that a powerful workers movement can get pretty much whatever it wants, if it cares to take it. if we build a strong enough labour movement, the government will have to follow us <3

I recently took some time off my day job to focus on art stuff, and cos i had a good friend visiting from the US. it was an….. eventful time to be ~physically~ absent from work. hard to discuss such spicy, job-threatening things in a medium like this, always happy to discuss IRL tho, maybe i'll draw about it all some day, will see. meanwhile here are some drawings i’ve done at work lately:

top requests for drawings are my workmates bashing each other, or the machines having sex with each other lmaoooo, red salute

If anyone here works in any of the CFMEU or MUA’s industries, made this poster spruiking the comic i made for overland about our unions involvement with the issue.

Let me know if you’d like a high resolution version of the file to print for your breakroom, the comic is meant to be accessible to rank and filers who might not have thought a whole lot about Palestine just yet.

Back in May 2022, i put it to a vote here which big project I should work on next. One option was voted twice as popular as the next preferred idea - sorry it’s taken me a while to get to it but wheels are finally in motion now. It's called 'Townsville Watchouse Experience', this is the spiel I put in that earlier update, and the overview holds up for what we’re currently working toward:

“One of my oldest dearest friends Kyle was recently put in a Queensland prison for mounting an Adani pit train, shutting it down for 20 hours, shovelling coal out of one of the open-topped carriages. He had a range of interesting interactions with other inmates when he was imprisoned, many who had worked directly for the mine site (an adani railway worker, adani security guard/spy, adani boiler maker etc). they were *universally* sympathetic to his actions, which some ppl might find suprising. we are thinking of collaborating and making a long form comic essay about these overlaps."

working out how to draw Kyle, trying not to go full Tom of Finland

We are working on a four-part old school floppy comic series, which will be published by the angels at the worker-owned publishing and printing operation, Glom Press. The first issue is going to print in February and should be out soon after that, will keep yas posted.

A couple of rough draft pages from early on in the first issue of the comic:

While we are on the topic, i got alot out of this short documentary, ‘The Coal Miners Defending the Worlds Most Controversial Coal Mine’, if you’re looking for something to watch.

The lejjens at my publisher Scribe have sorted a discount code for Patreon supporters, if anyone wants to pre-order the ‘12 Rules for Strife’ book. I’m sorry if you already ordered it before this! The code is TANGLES, you can enter it at checkout to get 20% off from here .,

It looks like I’m heading to the US to spruik the book when it comes out late April / early May. Excited to be presenting at the Labor Notes conference in Chicago in April, if you’re going let me know, or if u have any ideas for West coast places or ppl who can help hype the book pls hit me up! Hoping to do a string of events to help back the book and its public arguments.

For ages now I have been trying to finalise this scrappy initial design, still in draft form for now:

Once I get it right, i’m going to screenprint it on to some thick offcuts of wood. I thought that’d make a nice object, will make them available to Patreon supporters as a priority. 

Also planning on getting some mugs made w my drawings on them to get to you guys, can’t tell if that’s cringe / too “merch-y” tho 🤮 I think i’m gonna do it anyway!!!!!

Designed this masthead banner as a gesture of solidarity with a new grassroots publication called ‘School Work: Public School Educators Organising for Change’:

“School Work is written by a group of public school educators working and organising in Victorian public schools. We are rank and file members of our union, the Australian Education Union [join today], who believe in the need for transformative change. We are organising in our workplaces to build the density, structure and relationships required in order to strike for change.” You can read their publication, and join their efforts at schoolworkbulletin.au 

Me and my old friend Nicky Minus collaborated for the first time (!!?!) on this poster for the Global Day of Action for Palestine:

Made the above quick one for my old friend Michael Fikaris exhibition happening at Backwoods Gallery in April, celebrating the beloved gas-masked character that he has been drawing for a billion years.

also drew this stupid ‘888 / hammer and sickle’ bike patch a while ago and forget to share:

i fucken love biking and doubly so in a big gang, if ur into cycling also and based in narrm lmk, wanna do more big group cycles this year.

love u guys hope you’re all doing okay, free palestine!!!!!!! <3

end of december

Hey mates

The video in this post is a long-ass lecture i did at the National Library of Australia earlier this month, drawing upon a month of research into the Pink Bans - industrial action carried out by construction workers in support of persecuted queer people, prior to the emergence of the mainstream gay rights movement. A chapter of history about which not a lot has been written or recorded.

I am going to try and cohere the research into a book, perhaps with NLA Publishing or maybe i will DIY it as a shorter zine, wiil see. The core thrust will be trying to work out how exactly they built toward those strikes, and what lessons we can glean, esp as so many of us try to act industrially for Palestine, the climate, and other issues that are outside of what is traditionally thought of as "the workplace".
Anyway have a squiz of the lecture if u like, I tried to cram way too much in and got cut off lmaooo, i was so bummed about it but my mates pointed out that at least i didn’t give away all the conclusions that will be explored in the comic. Watch me try to keep going as the MC tries in vain to cut me off hahaha 🙈 The video should hopefully embed at either the start of the end of this email, otherwise you can find it here.

As we head into the new year, if you know of, or are involved in any disputes that could use a signal boost, feel free to send through a message, some friends and I make these little blue and white graphics each month, most of them are collated here. The intention is to celebrate and encourage strikes, and to let people in the broader public know how they can support. Strikes beget strikes blablabla. Feel free to suggest disputes you think we should focus on.

And if you’re into this stuff, words cannot express how highly I recommend Sarah Missen’s ‘Disputes Report’, a weekly run-down of workplace action, it’s a punchy, free newsletter with an accessible rundown of stuff going on each week, it’s really plugging a gap pls subscribe!!!!!! https://disputesreport.substack.com/

Still tinkering with this piece in support of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, hoping it may develop into a bit more of a resource, in collaboration with Nicky Minus:

You can click here to send an automatically generated letter to your superannuation fund, as part of the BDS campaign. All you need is your Super fund membership number which u can find in your email rly easily, it all takes literally one minute 🥺

Also made this deranged piece for some reason idk:

Me and Jeff got to pick up our test prints of ‘12 Rules for Strife’ from Scribe last week, very exciting it’s a real thing

It comes out on May Day here and in the US, if u want to pre-order a copy u can do that from here if yr in australia, or here if yr in the US.

Made these signs as a gift for the prototype delivery riders break room that was trialed in the city of Melbourne recently. A permanent hub for these workers would make the job of civilising their industry much easier. You can read about the efforts here and here.

The People’s Forum is a socialist space in NYC with a focus on internationalism and political education. They included the below piece in their 2024 journal, they’re gonna send me a copy but i don’t rly use journals so if anyone wants it click ‘like’ on this post and i’ll send it to one of u at random. or u can buy a copy here 

Union pressure has resulted in some positive reforms for pregnant and nursing workers in the US:

One of my favourite organisations on planet earth, Labor Notes, commissioned the drawing to go with this article, which summarises the new rights and protections.

I fkn love Labor Notes so much, I have an extra copy of their amazing organising manual 'Secrets of a Successful Organizer', if you think it might help your efforts, comment on this post and i’ll use an online randomiser to choose one of u to mail it to. Plz make sure yr address is up to date in your Patreon settings <3

Made this flyer for a vigil, part of ongoing efforts to secure a second supervised injecting facility in Melb:

The other recent piece i made on this topic is available for free download at high resolution from my website.

Made this goofy Star Trek drawing for Josh, based on the episode where the crew attempts to unionise :

I closed my online store for now, i am not heaps wanting to run a full scale retail operation hahah, but Patreon supporters can still access it if u like, using the password PAYTRONE to get into the website. https://www.samwallman.com/store the same password will get u 25% off at check-out.

Thanks so much for all the support this year <3 I do have a day job these days, so pls don’t feel burdened with sticking around here. The cash I make through Patreon means I can work less shifts to have more time to make this stuff - I'm currently working part-time hours, and over the last year or so in the job, i took almost 6 months off in total to focus on art projects. This wldn't have been possible without u guys's support. As embarrassing as I may find almost every aspect of Patreon hahaha, it does also mean I can prioritise working on projects that aren't monetised which is something I am grateful for.
But that said, yeh if you want to keep your cash in your wallet or put it into a different artists pocket, I will not be offended if u cancel, promise. or u can also always drop down to the most affordable $2 a month option. Anyway pls know I am rly grateful for the support and I treat it with alot of gravity!!!!

To finish off 4 the year here is this comic I made for Overland, as a result of some conversations and guidance from my mate Michael Hiscox from the CFMEU: 'Straight from their mouths: why Palestine is union business'.
Wish u the best for the last days of the year 💚🤍❤️🖤

november

hey mates how's it going

as the vast majority of the supposed leaders of the union movement and the political class act like they're made of clag held together with sticky tape, its been amazing to see union *members* step up and attempt to do the lords work in support of Palestine. a friend told me about a very......... useful essay, about a wave of strikes, rallies and civil disobedience in australia in 1999 (pretty recent!) that reached such a fever pitch that "policymakers were worried that public support for the US alliance would be lost. In the US, the Clinton administration became aware of the Australian public's considerable bitterness and dismay. The Australian public's "questioning of the Australian-US alliance shook the administration." Confronted by this kind of anger, the Australian government was finally forced to abandon its defence of the Indonesian military." 🧐🧐🧐 the whole article is rly instructive i think, have a read if u like, thanks to Michael and Molly for telling me about this chapter of recent history, i had no idea

https://victoriansocialists.org.au/campaigns/palestine

https://overland.org.au/2023/11/meaa-members-in-solidarity-with-palestine/

there are about 15 massive banner artworks on display at the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History conference, which winds up today. If yr in Canberra the exhibition is on the ground floor of the ANU school of social sciences, finishes at 5pm today.

i've been in Canberra all month, researching the Pink Bans (the green bans gay cousin lol) at the National Library. the research will lead to a new body of work on the topic, not sure exactly what that'll look like just yet though. been good to do this deep research into a time when trade unions effectively supported a movement outside of their industrial purview, trying to draw some lessons on how the hell they pulled that off, since we're all banging our heads against the wall about how best to back ~~~certain things~~~ going on today.  I'm doing a public lecture about the research and some outcomes this coming Thursday afternoon 4:30pm- 5:30pm. come along if yr in that part of the world, we can go to the pub after. if yr not in Canberra u can watch online, the NLA are going to stream it, more info here https://www.nla.gov.au/whats-on/events/pink-and-green-bans-sam-wallman

drew this to thank the librarians and archivists for their help all month:

if u want to get as sick of me as i am, u can also check out this podcast interview i did with Dan and Zak from the International Longshoreman and Warehouse Union in North America, talking about "art" and "activism" -- https://thedockerpodcast.libsyn.com/sam-wallman-activism-through-art or search 'Docker podcast' on spotify or wherever.

drew the below in support of community radio station RRR's staff and volunteers efforts to democratise their radio station. see also "you don't have to hate your job to want a union".

i drew it in the style of this shirt design i did for the station yeeeears ago, partly to show that the unionisation efforts are not some hostile alien force, we all love the station and want it to be better etc

and this 1 for my fav queer bar (in the world?????) the bearded tit, think they will be selling some shirts and wotnot with the design on it soon:

finally got around to drawing something about my other fav pub, the Semaphore Workers Club, for overland. so that the piece is more legible on screens, i designed it so it cld be pulled apart and broken into smaller panels, which i will also drop in below. i think the design kinda suffers cos of having to work out how to do this, also it's alotttt of text so i dunno if i pulled it off but everything is an experiment eh

i fiiiiinally finished mailing out packages to all u fine ppl - if anyone didnt receive anything in the post in the last 6 months or so plz let me know !!

and pls consider signing up for the free new 'Disputes Report', that the brilliant ♡ Sarah Missen ♡ is putting together each week. The substack is plugging a real gap, it's an accessible, independent and critical round-up of industrial disputes and worker going-ons from around the country: https://disputesreport.substack.com/

n yeh reminder about the Pink Bans lecture Thursday afternoon 4:30pm- 5:30pm at the National Library, or via the NLA's facebook page https://www.nla.gov.au/whats-on/events/pink-and-green-bans-sam-wallman 

talk to u next month, thankyou for the support!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

a clear flowing yarra

Harry Sadler's new book 'A Clear Flowing Yarra' is love letter to the Birrarung river. The river has long been a huge part of my life, so i was happy to meet with him to talk about it late last year. You might like to get a copy of the book, it's a beautiful thing, it's a deep meditation and a rallying cry. Harry is a very smart and thoughtful guy, deeply connected to ecologies and to living things. I'm learning alot from the book, it's turning up the dial on my love for the river, and everything it supports.

"A MIGHTY BEAST OF THE ECOLOGY

When I met Sam Wallman the first thing he said was ‘I have something for you’.

‘Oh!’ I replied excitedly as I saw the poster tube under his arm. ‘Is it your “Make the Yarra swimmable” cartoon?’

‘No,’ he laughed, half apologetic and half delighted as he handed me a rolled-up poster-sized print of his cartoon ‘Guide to the Yarra River’s beats’. The cartoon winds sinuously through a rainbow from warm orange in one corner to lush violet in another – a ‘melty rainbow map’ in Sam’s description – tracing a history of illicit sexual encounters along the river’s banks: ‘Lie back and imagine an ancient Gondwanan forest’ one panel advises, the text encircling two men engaged in oral sex as the river bends past them. 

Later in our walk along the river Sam would recount his experiences as a gay man, cruising ‘many times with deep intimacy with strangers by this river, picnics and drinking, then just trying to understand the physical attributes of it, spiritual attributes, the history of it, the industrial history as well – there’s so many aspects that I love about it’.

Sam was modest and self-effacing about his work during our forty-five-minute conversation, but his intricately detailed cartoons display deep thought and depth of research, as well as a welcome political and social earnestness: time and again after reading one of Sam’s cartoons I find myself filled with hope at the possibilities of the future. ‘If we were able to swim in the river,’ his Swimmable Yarra cartoon says, ‘that would represent the cherry on top of the restoration efforts. Because it can’t be healed in isolation. The river is a drill-core sample of the broader ecological state. It’s a barometer, a feedback loop, and a vein – supporting the lives of millions of creatures and countless ecosystems.’

At the top of the cartoon a person – short, dark hair, small gold-hoop earring – swims freestyle in the river. The water flows around and into them, the figure’s open mouth like a bay drawing in the river. I told Sam how much I liked that detail, of the river flowing into the swimmer’s mouth. He laughed and said, ‘I know, my friend was like “Man don’t have it going into the mouth, that’s too visceral”. I was like “If we can’t even cop the idea of it going into someone’s mouth …”’ He trailed off, the question of the limits of what we’re willing to imagine left hanging in the air.

Sam’s passionate about the river: at one point in our conversation he recounted how ‘on the weekend this fella was talking about how dirty the river was and I jumped to action straight away’. Adopting a comically distraught voice, he relived his castigation of the man: ‘“It’s silt! It’s floating silt! Leave it alone!”’ I told him about how I’d had to unlearn negative attitudes towards the river since moving to Melbourne. ‘Oh, it’s so offensive!’ he replied. ‘Even from a settler perspective, this is a mighty beast of the ecology, an ancient part of this colonised land. It’s kind of insult to injury to shit on it, really.’

He asked me about my upbringing, so I told him about growing up in Canberra, and swimming in rivers there because the sea was so far away. ‘Yeah I was a river kid,’ he said. ‘I’m from Geelong and the Barwon River was my … as a little kid I’d ride my bike by it every day, then as a teenager I’d smoke weed by it every day, it had different appeals to me through my life. I remember as a teenager my mum and her friends being like “Do you prefer the ocean or the river?” – they were chatting among themselves. Well both are amazing, it’s obviously not a binary, but I do feel myself drawn to rivers.’

I’d asked Sam to meet with no real idea of what we might do or where we might go, other than it seemed apt to meet somewhere along the river. We ended up crossing the Johnston Street Bridge from the Abbotsford Convent and then stepping onto the walking track that follows the left bank of the river – part of a longer track that takes three or four hours to walk in its totality and is my favourite urban bushwalk in Melbourne or just about anywhere else, the same track I’d walked back and forth so many times searching for Salvatore the seal. Sam had never been this way before and he was immediately thrilled – he jokingly described the path as ‘the DVD special feature’ of the river. Almost immediately we spotted a pair of tawny frogmouths roosting below the track; a little further on we passed by a man taking photos of a kookaburra. We talked about how cities can be biodiversity hotspots, often unbeknown to their human inhabitants. ‘You can take heart from that,’ Sam said. ‘It’s all a kind of resistance, really. All these animals.’

We spoke about the restoration of the river, the revegetation that’s occurred in the last few decades. ‘It’s pretty remarkable,’ he said. ‘It’s so recent, our parents would remember it being deeply maligned and also totally locked up because industry would have been right up to the banks. I feel like we even take for granted the fact that we can even just walk along it without a cyclone fence in our way … Like it’s a little glimpse of the commons, really … I feel like in the same way that people understand something about private property being a really foul concept in their understanding of the beach, even my dad gets so arced up if council puts some awnings on the beach or something like that, there’s a bit of that with the river too, it allows people to imagine a different sort of public ownership.’

I asked him about his own relationship with the river. ‘If I feel mentally unwell or anything I find movement has always helped,’ he said, ‘so cycling along the river has always been my default if I feel crusty or crazy or anything … you kind of lose your body in some way, even lose your mind if you’re sweating and your heart beats fast enough, it’s great.’ I asked him if he’d ever swum in the river. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘Intentionally and unintentionally. I swum in it actually not far from Galatea Point years ago and didn’t get sick thankfully. I’ve swum in it many times at Laughing Waters. That’s cheating, though, ’cos that’s very far upstream. Warburton – icy swims up there. My brother and I were up there last year in between Melbourne lockdowns, and we were swimming in Warburton and we found an old [tobacco] pipe in the margins, on the side of the banks, so very cool. Now we share this as a memento. And then I was a member of the kayak club, the INCC [Ivanhoe Northcote Canoe Club], and obviously stacked it a couple of times learning. Which is always what I remind my friends, ’cos I would always take them out with me kayaking and be like “You will fall in at the start”, and if you tell people you want to go swimming in the Yarra they’d never do it but they’re somehow willing to fall in accidentally, so see? You didn’t get crook. Just keep your mouth shut … It’s an act of love to swim in it I reckon at this stage, rather than a natural act, but I think that will change.’

It can also be an act of pleasure, and of leisure: there are no swimming lanes in a river, no carefully measured fifty metre lengths, no lines marked on the bottom. In the UK, swimming in a lake or a river or the sea is sometimes called ‘wild swimming’, but a more inviting name might be simply ‘recreational swimming’. In the last couple of years of working from home since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic I’ve found that I’ve been able to reclaim some of my leisure time – the vaunted ‘eight hours’ recreation’ that increasingly seems to have become the forgotten part of the eight-hour day. Of course for many people in precarious work eight hours of recreation – let alone eight hours’ rest – remains an impossible aspiration, but I want to believe that the glimpse of another way of living that we got at the start of the pandemic still remains, and can still be seized upon if enough people realise it.

‘Another part of the eight-hour movement that I try to remind myself about,’ Sam told me, ‘is that they wanted time to organise as well.’ As he said this we stopped to try to help an ant that was curled up on the dusty track and in danger of being stepped on. ‘I’m always thankful that they’ve sent us this eight-hour day through time, more leisure time, and then I remember that they also wanted us to organise in that time as well. We also have the time to fight for the river because of the eight-hour day too.’

Thinking about recreation along the Yarra, I told Sam about the community of swimmers that has grown up around Deep Rock, inspired by the Yarra Yabbies; how you can go there in the morning before work or the evening after work, or on the weekend, and there will be people having a dip. ‘And a chat as well,’ Sam pointed out, ‘because that’s another lever. You can fight people’s loneliness in this [swimmable Yarra] campaign too, and if someone did get sick or if there was visible pollution there’d be a natural base to push back and call their MP or whatever … Imagine if we had communities like that dotted along all the [river], like if each neighbourhood had a little swimming club.’

At the start of our conversation Sam borrowed the Simpsons neologism ‘crisitunity’ – something that’s a crisis, but also an opportunity – and at the end of our conversation he revisited it: ‘[The river’s a] Rorschach test really, you and I probably look at it differently, let alone some Tory … And look, we’ve been saying if they want to make it cleaner for their property prices that’s okay too, whatever gets us there. We’re only gonna fix it if we deal with the structural shit, though, obviously, because it’s so connected to everything. That’s why in the poster I drew all those forces flowing into it as streams ’cos that is how it is, all these different issues are in that river; it’s not polluted by the industry but it’s polluted by its other stuff … I’m so tempted by the shortcuts. But no, if we do just make it swimmable we won’t have used this crisitunity.’

I often think of the English poet John Clare, who documented the privatisation of common land in the earliest days of industrial capitalism. The river, too, like other urban rivers, has historically been privatised: even if the water itself was publicly owned, pollution from private industry so befouled it that it became effectively fenced off, unwelcoming and unloved by Melburnians. But the Yarra is not that river any more – especially in the wake of its popularity during Melbourne’s lockdowns. ‘Yeah, it’s the commons,’ Sam agreed. ‘It is a portal into some other way of having a city and sharing a space. ’Cos people get along [by it] … So maybe this is the frontier of the fight against capitalism still. [This is] such a cartoonist’s thought but I’m like “How do we link arms with the river and picket line or something?”’

Sam’s own relationship with the river continues to change and grow: ‘It pierces the veil somehow,’ he said as we walked along the track above the water. ‘Even a month ago my partner and I were dog-sitting in Heidelberg and we went to some brewery and we were coming back after dark with the dog and we decided to walk along the river, and I guess I’m my mother’s son, I usually don’t go to the river at night. You hear one story of someone getting garrotted while cycling …! I don’t even know if that ever happened, but “stranger danger”, I’m just probably not going to go down … But we walked along and it was just so beautiful in the darkness, just the low light and the different things that the low light highlighted, and the sound – it’s very loud … I saw it from a completely different perspective and it just unlocked it in a new way … We don’t live at a time when people have a very sacred outlook, but I feel like there’s some sublime character to the river.’

We finished our walk, accidentally but appropriately, on Yarra Street, completing a loop from the convent and back again. We said a slightly awkward farewell, and in parting Sam concluded: ‘Everyone loves [the river] and respects it, they just don’t know it yet.’"

- Excerpt from 'A Clear Flowing Yarra. Visions of Melbourne's river as it is and could be' by Harry Sadler.

Tony Birch, one of my favourite writers, said "a story of beauty flows through each page of this glorious book". Tony Birch wrote Ghost River, which I also rly recommend, it won the victorian premier’s literary award for Indigenous writing and is an absolute banger. Tony made this free, self-guided one hour walking tour of the river, which is a really nice thing to do with a friend and a couple of tinnies i reckon https://acca.melbourne/six-walks-episode-one-tony-birch/ 

<3

mid spring

Hey mates here’s latest piece for Overland supporting the calls to push cars out of the middle of the city:

The City of Melbourne is considering it, it’s not too much of a wacky idea, “everything seems impossible til its done”, etc!!!!!! i rly want to make more of these ‘urban planny’ kinds of artworks in the future

had the absolute fkn HONOUR of heading along to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union / ILWU Youth Conference in Vancouver a couple of weeks ago. Got to spend my birthday talking to fellow dockworkers about the utility of art in struggle. a couple of hundred of us together workshopped some symbolism for new artworks it was so cool, one of the best conferences and best unions on the planet imo

drew this in support of teachers and academics taking part in the beautiful strike wave thats currently washing thru the brittle ivory towers around australia:

A bunch of ppl were after stickers, you can order some from here if u want.
If you want to do a bulk order (100+), send me a message and we can sort it for cheaper. Also dont fagget the code PAYTRONE if u buy anything from the online store its 25% off with that code cheers

drew the below poster in celebration of the (victorious 😭) strike at Inghams, against so many odds:

And this one in support of the on-going ETU strike at EnerSys, based on a deranged thing the feral from HR said:

Made this one for my bf as thanks for copping my night-shifts on the chin:

Some workmates wanted copies so i put it in my website as a free download, if u want to print yrself feel free if u also work rubbish hours

Also put this one as a free downloadable graphic if it might ever come in handy :

if you want me to add the name of your workplace along the bosses arm above, i'd be happy to just send me a msg.

Made this following scrappy one about inflation after getting annoyed at the supermarket hahaha im pathetic

Chelsea from the MUA and Alex from CEPU made these cans celebrating the RAFFWU strike documentary 'We Are All In This For Everyone Else: The Union Campaign at Better Read Than Dead'  which you can watch for free here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBCPNMTwkJw it was just put online a few days ago.

I have a spare can if anyone wants one, especially if you’re a retail or fast food worker or were inspired by that dispute click """like""” on this post and i’ll send it to one of u at random

The above drawing is for a group of rank and file teachers trying to build power and also drag their union to fight some more, its a masthead for their new publication, which i think will come out soon. If you're a public school teacher and might like to be involved in some way with this new group send me a message or comment on this post and i can try to link you up.

The ‘Ban Cars’ piece at the start of this post was sponsored by Co-Power, a non-profit cooperative and green energy retailer. U can visit their website to read about their project and to switch to them as your energy provider, they’re cheap as and a rly good experiment imo.

Apart from that ban cars piece, all of the above drawings were done off my own bat, so i wasn’t commissioned or paid formally except for from u guys so THANKS.

Think i sent this through as just the black and white linework, here is the final piece,

again u can download and print yourself if it might come in handy, i believe the campaign to make public transport on Sydney road accessible is ongoing.

Obvs it's great when unions fight for things outside of just wages and conditions, but my god the Electircal Trades Union and other building unions have not been covering themselves in glory by wasting so many resources fighting for the right to…… shoot ducks??? 

and for the most part the shooting is not even for eating, just for kicks, the dickheads, it’s embarrassing. i've been to the wetlands after hunting season and the shooters just leave the ducks strewn around the landscape its fkn gross tbh

a friend and fellow Workers Art Collective member made the above stickers to encourage the unions to focus on ACTUAL SHIT THAT EFFECTS WORKERS LIVES there’s no shortage of issues. the stickers are free for ETU members, just send a msg to Garage Press and Distro with a picture of yr current membership card and a mailing address. For everyone else, u can order some here

‘12 Rules for Strife’ the book Jeff Sparrow and I have made with Scribe and editor David Golding is going to print early next week 😭 if you're in australia u can pre-order it here, or in north america u can order from here.

okay might leave it there, thanks hepas, might see some of u at this on sunday!!!!!

end of winter

Hey mates, fucken delighted 2 report that i have just sent off all the finished art for ‘12 rules for strife’, this book i’m working on with Jeff Sparrow. There will be blood (minor edits :-P) required by the publisher, and a few further tweaks here and there but we’re so close to finished now that it makes me SICK. Thanks for sticking with me while i was preoccupied with that slog. here are some more pages from the book:

Looking forward to this event in Tarntanya / Adelaide in a few weeks time, plz come along if u live there / spread the word to others who do, if you think they might be into it:

This is also happening while im over there which fkn rules:

you can see the trailer for the documentary and find out about the melbourne and brisbane screenings here . the Better Read Than Dead dispute was the first strike in retail in australia in decades, and saw the workers win the best conditions in their industry. it also helped revive the strike tradition. their efforts are close to my heart cos this was the first campaign that i got to fully draw along with, through the arc of the whole industrial action, as each development happened i tried to help spread the message to supporters thru a handful of illustrations. you can see all the pieces i drew to support the workers here. these drawings were done with my labour donated / funded by patreon supporters. after the strike, for several months the boss wouldn't let the workers order Our Members Be Unlimited to sell in their bookstore hahaha >:-(
anyway the film is going to be great i'm really excited about it. we need to get better at documenting current worker efforts!! so much cool contemporary stuff just gets lost to time, while we are obsessed with disputes of yesteryear.

Above is my latest drawing for Overland. and the cover i made for the 250th edition:

Things are heating up in the fight for melbourne’s second overdose prevention centre.
Genocidal yuppie residents and business owners have started postering upper Bourke street opposing the new site.

look at those pieces of shit hahaha. need to get out there and do some more postering in response. If anyone wants some copies of these prints (esp if yr up for sticking some up around the place!) pls let me know and i can leave some for you to pick up from Trades Hall reception.

There’s also this candlelight vigil happening on International Overdose Awareness day this Thursday day after tomorrow. There should be some of the above prints available there.

Drew the below pic a while ago in support of the push for a permanent break room (and space to organise!!!!!) for food delivery riders:

Melbourne city council is running a four month trial of such a space which is great. You can read more about these efforts here and here.

Got to go up to Sydney to draw at this academic conference ‘All Hands on Deck’ which was really great. Haven’t done any ‘live drawing’ events like this since before covid, it was nice to listen with my pen again.

Wish i had been able to draw this banger of a quote from one of my fav thinkers Elizabeth Humphrys but ran out of time:

"As climate change deepens, exceptional circumstances are going to become the norm... The bushfires came along. We saw a large number of deaths from the smoke from the fires, rather than the fires themselves. And protocols in workplaces weren’t able to adapt. Some workers were told to just wet a handkerchief or cloth and tie it around their mouth and get on with the job. Maritime and construction workers were much more likely to be able to take strike action because of their long industrial struggles... We saw the media attacking them for being lazy and wanting to not work. But actually the evidence is here now, about hundreds of deaths related to smoke and ash from those bushfires. And that's repeated with the Pacific Northwest Fires experience in Canada and the US… Workers tell us that with high heat and things like the bushfire smoke, productivity needs almost always trump safety. The question is, how do workers build the social power needed to ensure adaptation to climate change is on just terms?"

drew the above pic this morning as a gesture of solidarity to Nia, a union leader who has been targeted following that beautiful farm strike a couple of months ago. Workers Art Collective made a bunch of banners and placards with the farm workers the night before the strike kicked off, u can see some pics of that here. Since the strike, Nia has been stood down by the company, and they are now threatening to fire her. Her employer, Hussey Farms, provide fresh salads to ALDI, so the union is leaning on the supermarket to demand their supplier stops union busting. Please consider taking 30 seconds to send ALDI Australia a message and tell them to protect Nia's job http://unitedworkers.org.au/standwithnia/

Drew the above piece for a bottom-up supermarket unionisation effort in the US, the drawing ended up being part of them getting sued by the company?!?!??!!!!!! the union doesn’t seem too worried. you can buy some merch to support the (entirely worker-run union!) effort here https://store.traderjoesunited.org/

Also made these stickers as a favour to the beloved ‘Peoples History of Australia’ podcast (my bf makes the videos for their social media 😭). The dozen or so ppl i haven’t mailed stuff out to yet will get one in the post soon.

Donated lots of art to giveaways lately, including to a fundraiser for the VISY strike, a 'No Borders Poland' fundraising effort, and APHEDA Union Aid Abroad fundraising dinner. You guys paid for making + printing all this shit so cheers very much 🥂

Above is a drawing by my mate Judy Kuo, who has just gone out into the wild as a full-time illustrator so if u have any drawing work u need done, pls consider hitting her up in the future, and chuck her a follow if u don't already.

Talk soon ty for the support! shld be back to these regular Patreon updates now that book slog is largely done for.
<3 sam

cover

hey mates,

here is the cover of our new book '12 rules for strife', hasnt been put out there publicly yet but i got permission to share it here:

it is kind of vaguely riffing off this beautiful old Herbert Mcclintock linocut design for the cover of 'Strife', a communist newspaper back in 1930, that Jeff and I are both obsessed with:

Here are black and white outlines of some of the pages, as of today i've drawn the linework for 105 of the 128 pages, so getting closer... Colouring will be a whole thing but we're getting there.

Hope u like how it's coming along.

i will return to regularly scheduled programming / proper more detailed Patreon updates next month after i finish the absolute fkn marathon of getting the book dun. the final art is due in about three weeks, with the book to be released on May Day next year.

PS here is the latest monthly Overland piece which will come out soon, made in collaboration with Shane Reside and Allana Elliot: 

<3

hussey strike

Heya,

Here's a little shareable graphic me and a few friends made to support the high stakes Hussey farmworker strike that's kicking off this week:

Since 2015, migrant farm workers have led the first wave of unionisation in Australia’s farms in decades. Workers across multiple sites have fought cash in hand, contracting, piece rates and sexual harrassment to help build a fighting union with United Workers Union. These efforts have long represented one of the most exciting and promising forces in the labour movement in this country, and have reached a peak with a massive indefinite strike kicking off on Wednesday this week.

Tomorrow night the night before the strike starts, me and Nicky Minus are running a banner and placard making workshop with the workers and UWU.
I'm pumped about it omfg. We will all collaborate to make banners and placards that celebrate the strike and articulate the workers demands. These artworks will decorate their camp outside their workplace, and join them on any actions they take during their push.

There's room for a couple more people at the banner and placard making workshop, if any of u want to come -- it's tomorrow night in Springvale from around 8:30pm. First in best dressed unfortunately cos its not a huge space we're gonna be working in, let me know if you'd want to come along.

Otherwise everyone is encouraged to head along to the strike this Wednesday morning if you're able, 9 S Boundary Rd E Somerville at 6am, 28th June, about an hours drive from Melbourne.
And from then on, it will be a 24 hour presence, it will be a really welcoming friendly space, you can visit for half an hour or 12 hours up to you. As we know, strikes get the goods, and their occurance is down 97%(!!!) since 1970s levels, so I think it's worthwhile backing industrial action like this whenever we can. Consider heading down there with some mates and some snacks and support the first big formal strike in an australian farm for literally generations :-O

12 rules

hello hows it going

here are some of the rough pages from this '12 rules for strife' book that Jeff Sparrow and i are making together for Scribe, alongside our editor David Golding, who held my hand with Our Members Be Unlimited.

Jeff tied off the script a while ago, we finished a super rough and scrappy draft of the visual concepts of all the pages (thats what i did while i was in Perth on that fellowship), then did a more schmick coloured version of the rough draft of the whole book. now i’m on to drawing the finished artwork. we have less than two months to tie it off so i am……scrambling, lol 😆

i will drop in some of the rough layouts from the final draft below :

the process has been pretty demanding, the last while. it’s such a different thing, a book length project, compared to the quick and dirty single panel drawings that are my usual bread and  butter. this kind of longer work is more rigorous and satisfying, but also feels a lot more gristley and sludgey to wade through. i feel like the single frame drawings i do have become harder to pull off, the “rah rah” of them, it almost feels cringe to me sometimes. there is an immediacy that those single image artworks demand, and an oversimplification that is seductive and necessary cos of the form, but feels a bit ~off~ sometimes. best summed up in how the late great Bruce Petty called the cartoon “an appalling abbreviation” hahah. the longer form work feels a bit more like a meal. i hope to do more of it if the opportunity arises and if i can be effed!!!!

thanks for supporting me to work on this kind of thing, which pays appallingly, again i probably get about $2 an hour for all the work involved, if we were to map it out, based on the advance from the  publisher :-V so yeah thanku!

I’m  sorry i haven’t been sending out as bigger updates as usual on patreon - will be back to regularly scheduled programming here once i get the final artwork for the book submitted in August. until then i’ll try to send some bits and pieces from the book from time to time, as it takes shape.

i hope u like it when it’s finished. rly hope it’s useful for people, it’s been good working occasionally in this day job at the same time as we develop it, and thinking lots about how the messaging might resonate with my workmates, who have good values for sure but are not rly what you’d call on “the left”, showing them some of the drafts and just trying to see the messaging from their perspective...

i’m nearly done with the cover art, will try to send that through in the next week or so !

<3 and thanx from Sam

another overdose prevention centre

hey mates,

made a new piece in support of safe injecting facilities, since Ken Lay's report on the utility of a second site in Melbourne is due out any day now. the drawing is going to run on Overland soon, it's designed to present well on the web (long narrow pieces scroll down nicely), and it should also work well printed out and stuck on to street poles.

Once the community consultation report is released i will print a bunch of copies of the drawing and go stick them up around the place, in preparation for the usual bad-faith arguments against the sites. I will also make some copies available for pick-up from Trades Hall.

I was thinking, there are parallels with how since popular opinion on climate change has shifted, conservatives and denialists have had to pivot to saying "okay yes global warming is happening we admit that, but there's nothing we can do / other countries are worse / it's natural / it's too late blabla". Similarly, local property barons and business owners can't come out and say "we don't care about drug users" because that would show themselves, and cos the rest of us have seen the evidence around the effectiveness of these services, so they have to obfuscate - "we simply don't want the site near tourists / cafes / THE CHILDREN " etc. their plan will likely be to delay and delay and delay.
it's so slimy and it shld be howled down at every opportunity imo.

I was delighted to pause a recent television report about the Richmond safe injecting facility, get my pen out and trace the face of a NIMBY speaking out against the site, to use as the main character in the above artwork. I hope she sees it and recognises herself and has a fucken think hahaha.

Big thanks to Matt Plumb and Judy Ryan for the hugely instructive chats about the above piece.

A longer update to come soon hope you're all well!!!!!

<3 from Sam

april

Hey mates hope you’re all keeping well.

I’ve been good, been busy with this new book, it’s coming along, feeling like less of a head-fuck than the last one which is good!!!!!

As u can see, it is waaay more spacious, less dense than ‘Our Members Be Unlimited’, it’s pretty much a sentence per page which makes it breathe rly nicely i think.

Jeff finished the script a while ago, I finished a really rly rough layout of the whole thing last month, and I have been plugging away at a more polished, but still rough second layout of the whole thing since then. I don’t usually do such schmick / near complete drafts but I think the book will benefit from the work, even though it’s going to do my head in to redraw all these pages later:

I have to get all the art done by August, and it’ll come out in Australia and the US on May Day next year, one years time pretty much.

It’s called ‘12 Rules For Strife’ if i didnt say that already, Scribe are going to announce it properly on Monday i think.

Someone in the UK asked me if i wld be willing to turn this placard into a printable, digital graphic for people to use in opposition to “king charles” 🤮 coronation next month. If u want to download it and use it for any of these kinds of purposes feel free, u can get it from here 

The above and below art, along with a bunch of other pieces in this update were done for no $ so thanks for supporting me to make this kinda stuff.

Here is the second drawing i’ve done in support of rank and file art workers at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art / ACCA here in Melb, as part of their efforts to get a union agreement up and improve their situation. Looks like they are likely heading for strike action soon which is excellent <3

☝️ Pls don’t share this drawing around.

Drew the below shirt design for the excellent cunce at Harm Reduction Victoria. Was stoked to draw more about these issues, and to have a whole different raft of iconography and symbolism to try to work with:

The shirts got snapped up but they’re doing a second run, pre-order is here they’re $30 with all money going to their brilliant efforts https://www.hrvic.org.au/product-page/7-demandments-tshirt-order 

Matt from the organisation got me on to this rly good podcast about harm reduction called ‘Crackdown’ which i highly recommend!!!!

Drew this banger of a quote from my friend Anwen Crawford, it stuck in all of our heads since the Better Read Than Dead strike a year or two ago.

I was motivated to draw it after a pro-SDA* troll kept commenting in bad-faith on all my RAFFWU** posts, and i told him for every extra comment he left i would draw another piece of pro-RAFFWU propaganda hahah, so I have a couple more to draw still cos he kept banging on…

* the SDA is Australia’s biggest, crappest most rotten union

** RAFFWU are an insurgent “unregistered” union representing the same members, but with an interest in actual class struggle and positive outcomes for workers.

Semi related quote that i think of all the time:

Ben Juers and Paperback Bookstore made this beautiful pamphlet, with a transcript of his and my ‘salon’ conversation event a few months ago.

The little publication also features my comic essay about the anti labour spy agency the Pinkertons, and Bens fucken beautiful cover art. You can buy one for $5 at Paperback Books. I have a handful of copies that the bookstore gave me, I am happy to send them out to folks, I will send 5 to random people who click like this post.

Oh and last time i said i wld send out a copy of that giant ‘Labour definitions’ print to someone who clicked “like” on the last update. I used the website Random Generator to choose someone, to make sure it was fair, n the person that came up is Nand, will post to you soon.

I put a couple of other copies of this print up on my webstore samwallman.com/store, in A1 and A0 size. Reminder if u ever want to buy anything from the webstore use the code PAYTRONE to get 25% off. Or just write to me and ask for something and if i cannnnnn i’ll send it for free lol.

I’ve still got about 20 of u left to mail new stuff out to, IM SORRY ABOUT THAT, will def get them done before my next update, promise.

Okay im gonna clock off, here is this rough sketch of what im planning for my next Overland piece in a week or so. There is a lot of concern and outrage cos the Victorian State Government is shutting down trains that run alongside Sydney road while they build the elevated train line, without having an accessible PT option in its place in the interim (!). This will fuck over so many people. There is a 'Make Sydney Road accessible for all' rally happening on Saturday 17 June, 11am at Wilson Avenue open space. If you have any feedback on the concept sketch below pls let me know.

Cheers dickheads!!!!!! <3

March

hey mates

time in perth boorloo has been going great, been smashing through art stuff here, and this new book project, it feels GOOD. great to get to know a new place, and different layers of the left.

did a big public lecture the other day that went alright tho i do shit my pants with such things. i probably went overboard writing the thing, it was an hour and fifteen minutes long fucken woops. it's a broad presentation about art in grassroots social movements, it's the kind of presentation i'll be able to dust off and do again which will probably be handy to have on hand

got one more public event here, this thursday night at the CFMEU bar, an 'in conversation' type event with author Robbie Wood. if u or anyone u know is based in Perth plz encourage them to come along if u think they might be interested, more info here.

below is my monthly Overland piece, it will come out soon i just finished it yesterday:

it celebrates Solidarity Park (formerly the Workers Embassy), one of only two labour monuments in Western Australia. and a special monument it is imo, being an alive place, still very much embedded in peoples lives. 

I went there to sit and draw last week and there were three middle aged trans women there, looking like they had come to debrief after the counter rally that took place here in opposition to that fuckwit transphobes speaking tour.

on that topic i drew this yesterday, not sure what to do with it as its a bit intense but it was cathartic to draw after the nazis filling melbourne streets in support of trans phobic pieces of shit:

etc

i’ve started prioritising doing drawings directly for rank and file workers who contact me, more than going through unions. it feels more immediate and can lead to some looser work which feels good. also it’s a good use of this patreon $. here are some of these 'direct' type pieces i’ve done lately.

the below piece is for workers at ACCA (the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art), who are about to go public with their unionisation efforts:

below is a workplace poster i made for my mate who works at the Bureau of Meterology. sounds like a cooked place to work at the moment, which the bosses tried to bandaid by....... renaming the BOM as "The Bureau" recently, which addresses a total of zero workplace issues. also the staff (along w everyone else) rly like the name the BOM :

this was drawn for the residents of Barak Beacon public housing estate in Port Melbourne (near the water.....too nice for public housing residents!!!!!!) who are being pushed out of their beautiful building:

their petition to the State Government closes today, if u have a minute to sign it that would be greatly appreciate: https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/view-sign-e-petitions/details/12/485 You can read more about whats happening in The Age today: 'They’ll have to carry me out’: The residents fighting to save their public housing estate

On housing stuff, im excited to be working with academics David Kelly and Libby Porter on adapting some of the outcomes from last year's Forum for Dwelling Justice into a comic over coming months (the above poster is available for cost-price $20 from here). A few days ago the big write-up / dispatch about the forum was released, recommended reading: https://arena.org.au/dispatches-from-the-forum-for-dwelling-justice/ its basically an edited version of some of the speeches and panel presentations if u didnt make it on the day.

donated this german adaptation of this old drawing in the colours of the kurdish flag, to a fundraising effort to support people and animals in Syria after last months earthquakes. if those of u in europe want to support these efforts u can buy a black shirt with this design on it at black-mosquito.org or from here, all $$$ go to either 'the Kurdistan Organization for Animal Rights Protection' or 'Heyva Sor Kurdish Red Crescent'.

i posted on social media the other day that my publishers at Scribe recently got some of these big posters printed, with the 'labour definitions' section of my book splayed out across it. i have one to give away, i will give it to a random Patreon supporter that clicks "like" on this post. or if you work for a union, if u get them to buy 10+ copies Scribe will send you a big poster along with the books. 

here are a couple of newish pieces, one is for veterinarians, a workforce that is experiencing an epidemic of suicides, i had no idea:

and this one for the Australian Services Union, which was a fun headache to draw, they needed the piece to suit different printed outcomes so i had to make it so it cld be rejigged in a few different ways:

below is the drawing i did for Overland last month, i sent through the rough draft in my last update on so figured i'd send through how the finished piece ended up looking. i'm not heaps happy with it, way too turbo and busy, but everything is practise.
disappointing to see that the Liberal party might be taking better gambling reform policies than the Labor Party to the NSW state election this week?! fortunate that we don't have to vote for either of them tbh

Last month we lost Paul Richardson, a great (and often behind-the-scenes) union leader. he is the person who hired me at the National Union of Workers when i started working there a decade ago. when i left the union and came to draw full time, he championed the art and rly helped it to reach workers, and he helped me to be able to function in a few different ways. he was an absolute skullcrusher, i had him both for and against me at different times and my god u FELT IT either way. u guys paid to print 5 big copies of this print for his family and his union so cheers for that.

and cheers to Paul <3 we lost a great fighter

never got around to sharing these pics of the banner and placards that me and Nicky Minus painted with some young'ns from the Australian Youth Climate Coalition late last year. endlessly repulsed by the Labor Party sneakily approving over 100 new gas & coal projects the other day 🤢 just absolute ghouls.

below is a quick playful drawing from a couple of days ago, im realising as i make this post how many of these drawings exist just so i could vent hahah, very grateful for the outlet tbh, cld be a worse pressure valve

ok ill leave it there, thankyou for the support!!!!!!!!! come to the event on thursday if u live in Perf, it will be nice the CFMEU bar is beautiful, it's in the basement of the old Trades Hall here which has been fully restored (which the CFMEU had to buy back themselves, after the Labor Party sold it off (bit of a trend in this email lol) <3

summer

hey mates hope you’re all keeping well.

here are some test pages for Jeff Sparrow and my sum-day book ‘12 Rules for Strife’. they’re proof of concept type pages, won’t make it to the final thing but thought i’d share them

The ‘12 Rules’ project is what i’m going to be working on in Perth when i head there for six weeks toward the end of this month, cannot fkn WAIT.

Here are some scrappy events im gonna do there, if u or any of ur friends live over that way:

made the below piece at Troppo Screenprinting in Coburg a couple of weeks ago. Troppo is a rly special thing, u pay a cheap membership and they teach you how to screenprint and let u use the space whenever you want. The added appeal is that u can print with fucked up colours like the fluro green below, and also print on different kinds of surfaces like wood n fabric. If there’s anything you’d like to see me print / print on to let me know

i also rly like how wonky the registration is, the way the colours don’t quite match up 😻

most of the copies of this print i made were toooooo scrappy tho, cos it was my first time, i have one more that wasn’t too fugly, if u want it click “like” on this post and i’ll choose someone at random to mail it to.

i’m hoping to screenprint some copies of the below piece eventually, a new drawing based on some rly sound old organising principals that Matthew sent me:

below drawing is my first one for Overland for the year, it’s based on something the head of the Maritime Union said at a rally last month. “In attacking us, they bring us together" / Overland

drew this for the Rail Tram and Bus Union in WA, to celebrate two of their formerly divided branches uniting after a long time. The RTBU are selling prints of them to fundraise, if u want one https://www.rtbuwa.asn.au/2023/01/01/happy-amalgamation-day/

here are some mental health posters that i made over the last while, maybe they’re a bit corny, it’s a hard brief to make these kinds of resources for super blokey workplaces 😅

drew this on christmas eve cos i was annoyed at all the bad faith arguments about the strikes taking place, especially in the UK :

I’m still slowly getting through mailing everyone out new printed stuff, i ran out of some of the things so had to do another print run which held things up a bit but now i’m back into it. If i send u copies of stuff u already have feel free to regift or chuck in the bin without telling me heh

the new job is going well, especially cos i am not having to wring $ out of my drawings as much, it’s making me fall in love with making stuff again which i’m grateful for. i diiddddd go ~8 days~ without a shift last pay period tho💀 so still v grateful for the patreon. when i get permanency i’ll wind this up i reckon.

thanks mates see u in your post box soon if not already, as usual lemme know if you’ve changed addresses 😁 ty for the support!!!!!!!!!!!!❤️

december

hello! 

drew the above piece that u can download for free from here, and print yrself to make into a card for your union delegate / rep / shop steward / organiser, to thank them for their largely invisible n often thankless efforts.

new piece for Overland about the efforts to expand voting rights to 16+ year olds. an excellent campaign on face value and then doubly so when u consider how progressive most young ppl are / and their potential impact as a voting bloc hahaha  😝

getting the young'ns the vote is current greens policy, and the ALP had it as a priority back in 2016 but have been quiet on it lately, i don't think they're against it but its not in their focus atm. meanwhile people aged under 18 paid $40 million dollars in taxes last year, which u wld think wld afford them some rights, "no taxation without representation" blabla. and ppl their age can already vote in argentina, austria, bosnia, brazil, cuba, east timor, ecuador, estonia, germany, greece, indonesia, malta, nicaragua, scotland and wales. 

--

Since i last wrote i am pleased to report that i have got a JOB.
I think i overdosed on drawing the last while, which happens, I remember having similar feelings three or four years ago, and a friend said “just stick with the art for now, do your best with the book, go hard on it, and then reassess things”. Feel like that is kind of what happened, the book does feel like an end-point of some sort, and i will struggle to continue to draw groups of workers in ways that don’t bore me and bore you guys hahah, so i need to mix it up.

Plus i miss having co-workers, using my body, having a degree of job security. The last especially with the leaps and bounds AI / robotic illustration are making.
I got AI / a robot to produce these original pieces about artists work getting automated:

I am not rly mad about drawing becoming automated, (AUTOMATE ME PLEASE!!!!!!!), not sure why artists shld expect not to be effected by automation when just about every other layer of the workforce is. You can’t rly resist it. i liked this take about it all, and this one also:

People say the work that AI makes is still fugly and alot of it is, but it’s also *very new* technology, its gonna jump ahead in leaps and bounds over coming years / even months. I don’t think robots will be making narrative based work any time soon, like longer research based or reflective comics, but i think they will probably be making a large chunk of what we see as static, stand-alone artworks in the next couple of years. it does all make me a bit uncomfortable, but that said, as an example, even though it has pushed thousands of graphic designers out of work over the last five or so years, no one gets mad at a time-poor comms worker or organiser for using Canva to lay out a flyer (and i dont rly see why they wld).

above is an AI rendering that a friend of a friend of mine got made, based on my illustration style hahah FUCK.

anyway ALL THIS SAID the day job i got is only giving me two/ maximum three shifts a week at present, so i’m gonna keep this Patreon going until i can be made permanent or pick up more days.

I’m never gonna stop drawing as long as i have fingers, and perhaps one of the most special parts of the new job is that I can draw while on shift. The position is a ‘lashing and pinning’ job at the docks, basically involves securing the containers when they’re up on the ships and removing metal attachments when they're taken off the ships. If i can cop the physicality of it and the night shifts, it might hold me in good stead for years to come, thats the hope anyways...

turned that 'boycott' comic into a printed zine, which i've been slowly posting out to all u ppl, along with some new stickers and wotnot. pls email me if you've moved houses lately and i'll update address. i'm about halfway through sending the packages, might take me a bit longer to get them all out, thanx for yr patience.

the boycott comic was also translated into italian recently for Internazionale, i will put the italian version at the end of this email, feel free to forward it on to anyone u think might like to read it in that language.

drew the below little design for the MUA to celebrate their 150th (!!!) bday this year. did it as a freebie since they're my union now :

also drew this sick quote from MUA leader Paddy Crumlin, which i'm now a bit nervous about putting into the broader world cos of the new job hahaha (the rally depicted was about 200 metres from my work), i wanna keep my head down for a bit. good quote from him tho, and i hope the drawing will find a home when i feel a bit more settled:

ive been trying to tie off the below rough sketch about the pokies, but the entire existence of poker machines is so big and bleak and looming that it's hard to find an entry point into the issue. even harder to make something kinda camp / playful or goofy. if u have any ideas about how i might tweak the draft to make it punchier / less "scold-y" pls let me know!!!!!!

some Teaching and Research Assistants Union members at Concordia University in Montreal made this banner with a remix of the 'united we bargain' graphic on it <3

ok i might leave it there, thankyou for the continued support!!!! and dont forget to let me know if you've moved, send me a msg. have a good xmas and ny mates x

PS This is on TODAY if u or anyone you know works for a delivery rider company!!!!
a great first step imo:

november

Hey mates, 

Slowly plodding through mailing everyone out some new zines n stickers and wotnot. Pls reply to this update with your new address if u hav moved house !

Pls let me know if you might also like any of these shirts, I realised they're sitting in my wardrobe never worn them, and i'm not ever gonna wear them i wld feel a bit cringe hahah. they're all mens cut size L

If u want one, leave a comment on this post, that way others will see if any have been snapped up already. also got one of these bags, first in best drest:

I also still have some sizes of these shirts that I made for u Patreon supporters available thru my website. Sourcing the shirts, screenprinting, keeping track of sizes, mailing out and all that was extremely boring so im unlikely to make any more, so get in there if you want one https://www.samwallman.com/patreonsupporters

also a reminder that if u ever wanna buy stuff from the main store the code PAYTRONE at checkout gets u 25% off

drew the above piece after hearing from lots of friends that they find it hard to organise in their workplace if there aren't widespread antagonistic relationships with the boss, or if their co-workers are actually invested in their work. which seems funny to me, if yr invested in your job wldn't u wanna contribute and formally democratise it and have a proper say i dunno. i added the above graphic to the 'downloadable art' section of my website if you want to print one out for your workplace.

drew the above and below pieces for the Trade Union Congress in the UK, in an attempt to highlight all the overlaps between the many and varied strikes happening over there lately, a strike wave pulling together railway workers, teachers, health unions, posties, airline workers, fkn doctors even ~barristers?!?!~

went and visited the sydney university strike recently, was very amused to hear about some inventive picket tactics including students acting in solidarity with their teachers by tirelessly disrupting (/ fillabusting?!) zoom classes when the uni tried to push all classes online as a strike-busting tactic. and also the below guy getting gently placed 😇 into the bushes earlier that day for trying to force his way through the picket.

me and a few friends made this graphic to support the plasterboard manufacturing workers at Knauf in Port Melbourne. we want to see more strikes and more ways for the public to support ppl taking strike action so i think there will be more of these graphics to come.

me and fellow WAC member Hollie also went down to the site and ran an informal banner and placard making workshop with the members as a gesture of solidarity, cos they were getting antsy just sitting around on the picket line non stop. I was rly touched to see everyone get so into painting - my friend pointed out that "yes boredom is a hell of a motivator" 😒😒😒

after 40 days (!) on strike, the workers won the bulk of their demands.

last months drawing for Overland. trying to make an infographic a tenth as good as Mona Chalabi's work. someone on the internet thought the graphic said that we cld potentially make enough renewable energy to power "500 Australians" not "Australias" hahaha.

an Italian translation of 'the history of the boycott' comic i made for The Nib has been published in Internazionale magazine in Italy, if u know anyone over that way who might wanna grab a copy of their next print edition. It will probably also be published on their website next week. Realised i've been drawing for them for like 12 years now which is nice as.

I think in the last update i sent the rough sketch of this drawing i did for a nurse i met at the pub, here is the final:

and an adjacent new piece:

drew this to support Jerome Small's campaign to get elected to Parliament under the Victorian Socialists banner. my first idea was to draw something about how i wld move house so i could vote for him but he said that might be a bit niche, fair enough. for real though if u live in the northern metro seat of melbourne please consider listening to what he has to say, looking at his record, decades of building grassroots power and industrial organising, and think about voting for the guy or even volunteering for VS. apparently he has a real shot of winning the seat the poor bastard

some of you msged me cos u noticed my social media pages are turned off at the moment. thats cos im trying to get a day job and scrambling to hide my low-key mutineer energy hahaha. i may have secured a part time job, im just waiting for the final word from HR. in light of the fact that i worked well over full-time hours last year, but my income was almost ~to the dollar~ the annual australian minimum wage, and i recently received my first royalty cheque for my book, which is *negative* $806 LOLOLOL the publishing industry is hilarious. i've needed to get something a bit more concrete going on for a while now. i'll keep u posted how it all shakes out, and will decide what to do with this Patreon depending on how things come together, how much art im able to continue making n so on... watch this space.

in other news

• ppl in the UK can now get Our Members Be Unlimited in bookstores, or online from this website where u can choose which independent bookseller u want to support.

• it's available in the US too, if you buy the book from Powells Bookstore online using their union partner link, 7.5% of the sale goes toward the ILWU Local 5 strike fund.

• ABC Artworks did a small feature on me n the book, if u didnt see it u can watch it here if you like, i tried to attach it to this post also not sure if that worked or not

• i enjoyed this piece of writing: "The Funeral of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II as seen from the vantage of a Gay Sauna in London" 

• And this write-up about strippers in Hollywood who are unionising through the actors union. "At an August rally, Actors’ Equity President Kate Shindle declared, “they work hard, they are entertainers and artists and athletes, and now they are our siblings in the labor movement.” The crowd chanted, “strippers and actors, shout it from the rafters!”

• On the topic of new frontiers of industrial organisaton, "Fitness trainers are organizing to flex more muscle in their workplaces" 

Talk to you soon thankyou for the support!

act your wage

hello hope ur all keeping well

i recently read two facts that shook me, Labor Notes, who are about to publish an excerpt from my book, wrote that as recently as the year 2009 mass industrial action "had all but disappeared in the United States—indeed, that year witnessed the fewest number of major strikes, *five* in total, since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking labor conflicts." An insane stat made heartening when u consider the kind of wave happening over there right now.

the other almost incomprehenisble stat came out of the Climate Council's research, finding recently that considering australia is one of the sunniest and windiest countries on earth, it holds enough renewable energy to power the country 500 times over. I am trying to make a drawing out of that cos the stat stuck in my head like a pop songs chorus !!!!

Flat Out are running this 'Homes Not Prisons' campaign to stop the expansion of melbournes womens prison, and are calling for a reallocation of funding to public housing. u can follow these efforts here, including the pre state election rally they've got planned. i've done some art for them over the last year or two, but last wkend me and Nicky ran a banner and placard making workshop for them, out of our art studio in Trades Hall. we did it with donated labour / no payment cos these orgs run on the smell of an oily rag, so cheers for the $ u guys contribute that helps to do this kind of thing

if u are part of a push that cld do with some protest materials let us know cos we're open to running more of these workshops in the future, it's a positive way to get ppl together off of the fkn internet (sorry internet i know u can hear me). also we've noticed that some of the banners n placards we have made over the years are still being rolled out for demos like 5 years after we made em which is great.

we also all together made these signs for the big Abolish the Monarchy rally yesterday:

extremely weird and excellent feeling to see the above placard i designed get picked up and ran with, someone painted it on to a banner, unfurled it off some church in Northcote, and then burnt a british flag next to it lmaooooo, beautiful stuff, there's a video of it here if u want to see.

here is a new drawing for the Electrical Trade Unions youth activist crew, to celebrate their fifth year of organising around all kinds of issues, not just industrial stuff:

i drew this "public transport should be free" piece for Overland, mostly inspired by getting inordinately pissed off at an article in The Age calling for an end to melbournes free tram zone. surely spite has inspired all of the worlds best artworks!!!!!!

and the most recent piece for Overland which came out a couple of days ago, inspired once again by getting annoyed, this time by all this "quiet quitting" talk :

this is the piece i drew which is up at Overland now:

had a suprisingly good time at the Melbourne Writers Festival the other day doing a session with my friends Jeff and Lenny. if anyone wants a copy of Jeffs new book that i drew the cover for, if u click "like" on this post i will randomly choose someone to mail it to. clicking the like button also helps me know if anyone actually sees these updates, i have no idea how ppls notification settings work and whether or not anyone gets these updates hahah.
the um 'winner' of the last time i did one of these was Angelica btw, Angelica i mailed you a couple of days ago! !

a few more pieces, that u guys paid me to make:

portuguese translation of the "blame the boss if yr inconvenienced by a strike" drawing for ‘Relâmpago’ (Lightning), an antifascist sports club in Lisbon. always up for translating this kind of drawing if it'd be useful just let me know.

this one is still a rough sketch, will finish it soon. tbh full disclosure i didnt go completely unpaid for it, a nurse bought me a pint in exchange for my agreeing to draw it hahah:

'our members be unlimited' seems to be going alright, it just came out in the US, i have no idea how to help the book make a dent in such a big country where i know so few ppl. hopefully it finds its own way.
a mate of mine yesterday called the book "the childrens picture book bible, but the union version" lolol

the launches around the country have been rly nice i've enjoyed em heaps it's been so good getting lots of people together around an affirmative thing. it looks like there are gonna be a few events related to the book happening in Tasmania in the third week of november, Launceston Davenport and Hobart. if u know any good union officials or rank and file members down that way pls link us up!

i've had some friends ask if i'm rich from the book yet which is funny, for the record and just quietly, i get max $4 per copy of the book sold, or 10% of the cover price. i got a total $7000 advance for the five years work. even an advance tho, is just a *downpayment* of those $4 chunks tho - so i have to sell alotttt more copies before i even start getting the four bucks per copy sold :-[] even tho u obviously dont make a thing like this for the cash, authors cld do with getting organised, since the $ is going ~somewhere~...

which is all to say that i am now looking for a day job, which im kind of excited about. too much time sitting round drawing on my own, i am looking forward to changing it up a little.

drawing for the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, celebrating their 170th(!) year of fighting.

ok i will leave it there talk to u guys next month. feel free to forward this on to anyone u think might be interested / might be up for supporting me here.
and don't forget to click "like" if u wanna maybe get sent Jeff Sparrows new book Provocations. otherwise plz consider buying a copy it is very good!

<3 from sam

pinkertons

hey mates below is the comic essay i finished recently for The Nib. thanks to my friend Shaun Slifer for some guidance with this one, and Eleri Mai Harris for her skill as an editor. hope u guys like it, and that the format works alright in this email...

also just quickly if ur in sydney pls come to this on friday if u can! bring ur friends if u like, there will be a bunch of free booze and words spoken by good ppl and an exhibition of art from the book

i've tried to mail out postcard invites to patreon supporters that live in nsw, if i missed or u want some more or wotever pls let me know i can try mail u today. i got a bunch of new stuff printed up recently so will try send out some stuff to all of u guys in coming wks.

cheers hope ur well !

sam

let them absorb the risk

hey mates hope you're all keeping well. so many ppl are sick right now i dont remember things ever having been like this b4. i drew this for my monthly Overland piece just finished it last night, i think they will publish it this coming wk:

im looking forward to getting to adelaide later this wk, for a few events:

- speaking on an "Artists as workers" panel at the "ARTISTS ORGANISE!" conference, next Friday August 5th at Nexus Arts
- a free workshop hosted by Writers SA and i next saturday August 6th, about making socially engaged comics and stuff like that. no experience drawing or writing necessary, everyone welcome.
- and this saturday afternoon is the south australia launch of Our Members Be Unlimited, which is gonna be beautiful i think, some of my favourite ppl are launching it, and it's happening in the Semaphore Workers Club, an old RSL that got taken over by communists lol

my friends Chelsea and Alex designed and had these beer cans made up for the launch, rarely have i felt more fucked up by a gesture hahaha 😭 not sure if others are as into this as me, but if u do want one, click 'like' on this post and i'll post one out to a random "liker"

one of the legends who got the cans made up is an organiser for the Communications Electrical & Plumbing Union, and some of the members he represents got locked out of their workplace recently by a pig of a boss going nuclear over their industrial action so i made this as a gesture of support / way to further bother the boss :

drew this street poster for the 'forum for dwelling justice' that some housing activists and academics are organising in a months time. u can read more about the event here it's gonna be good i think. a couple of people were asking for the PDF file so they cld print it out themselves to stick up at work n wotnot, u can download from here if you like.

was stoked to donate this design to the Rail, Maritime and Transport union in the UK, for them to raise $ for their strike fund: 

if u want to buy any of these items u can go to the south manchester RMT branch website, with all $ raised going to the hardship fund in support the workers staying out as long as is required. 40,000 rail union members are to walk off the job for another 24 hour work stoppage tomorrow i believe 🥰

unfortunately there is a child i need to beat up somewhere cos this shirt they're also selling, designed by 7 year old Flynn is objectively better

also drew this one up for them as a freebie (slash paid by u guys) cos i think its heaps exciting what they're doing over there. if u haven't gone down a Mick Lynch youtube hole i can't recommend it highly enough.

drew this for the Young Workers Hub in Brisbane to celebrate their fourth bday:

and this banner for United Workers Union delegates to paint and colour together at the UWU conference this wk:

I swore that after i finished the big book project i'd focus less on worker-related stuff, i promise i will wean my art off this subject soon hahah. in the meantime if u live in nsw plz save the date friday 27th August for the sydney launch of the book, if u wanna come.will send out more details about that soon.

sincere thanks for the ongoing support !!! <3

bones out of body

new drawing about bones and private schools, for Overland coming out with them next week some time.

this is just a quick update to tell ppl that me and old mate Ben Juers are doing an “in conversation” salon thing hosted by Paperback Books next Tuesday night, talking about the new book among other things. also i might do a presentation slideshow type thing with a bunch of drawings and photos from my time working at Amazon. from 6pm Tuesday the 5th july at Mancini Bar Naarm. capacity is limited and filling up i think, u can email paperbackbookshop.events@gmail.com if you would like to come.

ben me and hollie at the geelong library strike last year :-)

chunkier update next time!!!!!!! thanx m8s <3

--

PS flyer and facebonk event for the adelaide / Tarntanya launch of the book in one months time, pls share w any SA folks u think might wanna come:

happy solstice

Hey mates

Hope you’re all keeping well! Things have been a bit deranged my end, equal parts stressful and special, lots of family care stuff been going on over the last month or so and the book spruiking. kinda overwhelming chunk of time but doing pretty good so far, hope u are too.

I’m headed to Canberra / Ngambri to run a couple of workshops this weekend, if u know anyone who lives there and might wanna attend pls let them know, the workshops are free and u don’t have to have written or made art or comics before, you just have to register. There is a workshop for teenagers this Saturday the 25th and one for adults on Sunday 26th.

Also running a workshop in Adelaide / Tarntanya on Saturday the 6th of August, hosted by Writers SA, same deal also free u just have to register here to come along. Pls share w anyone in SA u know who might be into it!!!!

Another few event things just quickly:

- doing a live in-person convo w Ben Juers, hosted by Paperback Books as part of their ‘Salon Series’ in narrm melbourne the Tuesday after next, the 5th of July, 6pm. shld be fun, if u wanna come email paperbackbookshop.events@gmail.com

- The Adelaide launch of Our Members Be Unlimited is happening at the Semaphore Workers Club on Saturday the 30th July 3-6pm, no need to rsvp, come along if ya can there will be a presentation and some speeches n wotnot :-)

- the Sydney launch of the book is happening at the Maritime Union of Australia in the city on Friday the 26th, shaping up to be a big fun event, will send more info about that soon but save the date if ur in syd!!!!!!

Last update i did a poll asking what i should work on next. The clear favy that got voted up was a longform comic essay about my old friend Kyles recent experiences in a Queensland prison with workers involved in the coal industry, when he was locked up for some anti-fossil fuel industry direct action. I will get onto this one soon promise.

The second most popular option was a piece about the difference between ‘direct’, ‘delegated’ and ‘smug’ politics, which is gonna form the backbone of this small book / pamphlet project i’m working on with Jeff Sparrow. I went ahead and made this one for Overland a couple of weeks ago:

Speaking of Jeff here is the cover we made for his new book Provocations, and some of the interstitial drawings from inside:

The poll before last where i asked what ppl thought i shld draw next, the Salvatore the seal option got voted up. The Nib ended up commissioning this v short comic about him, don’t think i shared it here in full yet:

The book has been going gang-busters which has been genuinely rly surprising n very heartening :,-) 

The publisher hasn't got any stock left, and apparently most bookstores are sold out now, but the reprint should come in late next month / early august. Scribe have set up the pre-order page on their website again, i think the 25% discount code for patreon supporters will still work if u enter SAVECURTIN at checkout.

Here is a rough sketch of a new drawing i've been working on that i hope to finish soon. Hope your week is going well!!! Thankyou for yr support!!!!!!!!!! <3

what

Hey hows it going, I thought I would send through the invite to the book launch happening on Thursday June 2nd, if any of u want to come u can RSVP directly to joshua@scribepub.com.au
Should hopefully be a good night, I’m working on some kind of presentation, mostly about Amazon stuff i think. there will be some booze and some words by Jeff Sparrow and Elizabeth Lim. 

also, im happy 2 say that Scribe have agreed to offer Patreon supporters a discount on the book. If you enter the code SAVECURTIN at checkout here you should get 25% off. Pls don’t share this outside of Patreon tho, and my apologies if u already pre-ordered a copy at the full price 😅

I thought since i’m writing and since u guys are my bosses lol, i would do a poll to see what people would like to see me prioritise working on next. also just cos its hard to decide so i'd like to know what might resonate with people. at the end of this email u can vote out of the following options. I think u have to log in to Patreon to do that, sorry about that. To say thanks I will choose a voter at random and send them a large format print of this poster about that shitty corporate drawing style (the original piece is online now at Overland). 

also cheers 2 Annette who won the draw out of new Patreon supporters, i will send u a big print of this piece soon (or if u'd rather different one lemme know). thanks also to the other ppl who signed up recently i appreciate it.

OPTION 1 - COAL
One of my oldest dearest friends Kyle was recently put in a Queensland prison for mounting an Adani pit train, shutting it down for 20 hours, shovelling coal out of one of the open-topped carriages. He had a range of interesting interactions with other inmates when he was inside, many who had worked directly for the mine site (an adani railway worker, adani security guard/spy, adani boiler maker etc). they were universally sympathetic to his actions, which some ppl might find suprising. we are thinking of collaborating and making a long form comic essay about these overlaps.

OPTION 2 - 'MEANINGFUL ACTION'
I could illustrate this excellent quote my friend Kieran shared with me a while ago:
“Meaningful action… is whatever increases the confidence, the autonomy, the initiative, the participation, the solidarity, the equalitarian tendencies and the self-activity of the masses and whatever assists in their demystification. Sterile and harmful action is whatever reinforces the passivity of the masses, their apathy, their cynicism, their differentiation through hierarchy, their alienation, their reliance on others to do things for them and the degree to which they can therefore be manipulated by others - even by those allegedly acting on their behalf.”
- Maurice Brinton, in As We See It, 1967
This would form part of a bigger collaboration that I’ve been plugging away at with Jeff Sparrow about the difference between what he terms ‘direct’, ‘delegated’ and ‘smug’ politics.

OPTION 3 - MURAL DEVELOPMENT
I could focus on finding a good outdoor wall in melbourne and getting a massive artwork onto it, and try to bump up the technicality of it from previous murals ive done. Not sure if this will interest ppl in the abstract since i don’t know where exactly the wall is or what i’d paint hahah, but i thought i’d put it here in case ppl wanna see more of that stuff out there in the world and also cos i prolly wldn't bother prioritising this kind of work otherwise.

OPTION 4 - WOODEN FOLK ART
I am obsessed with this anonymous piece of 1940s miner folk art that is part of the West Virginian Mine Wars Museum collection, it’s one of my favourite artworks ever:

I was thinking i could try to make something inspired by it, something painted on thick wood and cut out with a jigsaw. Not sure if this would be of interest to anyone but me though, or if it seems lowkey self indulgent 😆

OPTION 5 - PHILLIP ISLAND REWILDING
For a while now i’ve wanted to make a graphic essay about the 1980/90s rewilding of a huge section of Phillip Island, which as you prolly know involved the government buying back and bulldozing of a tonne of houses on the island, for conservation purposes. It was hugely controversial at the time but it is now peaceful bush and wetlands and is almost entirely unrecognisable as a previously kinda suburban area.

OPTION 6 - TEST THE PILLS

Last week the Coroners Court of Victoria found yet again that we need a drug checking service after another young person died from taking one drug labelled another. Every week there are reports of sus gear going around causing avoidable casualties. more people die from drug overdoses each year than die on the roads, but policy responses get tangled in gears of reactionary media coverage. i cld potentially make a mass produced street poster about the need for drug testing, similar to the 'safe injecting rooms save lives' piece i did last year.

Okay thanks mates, i will make whatever gets the most votes <3 hopefully some of u are up for clicking an option or two below. and don't forget to RSVP to Scribe if u wanna come to the book launch on the 2nd.  cheers!!!!!!!!!! 

corporate memphis

hey how's it going

here is a new comic about that cancerous drawing style called 'Corporate Memphis', it's going to be published by Overland soon.

tech journalist Josh Gabert-Don wrote in Wired that “the immense reach of Corporate Memphis, or the design possibilities we’ve been deprived of because of it… is, after all, simply a reflection of big tech, and how it has constructed a world with users on one side and executives on the other.”

a couple of days ago i got my hands on this PRINTED THING :

extremely cool to hold it and to recognise it as something that is no longer mine.

you can now pre-order the book here, and it will get to you in like a months time, it comes out May 31st 😅🤢🥰 

if you wld like to come to the official launch in Melbourne on June 2nd, pls let me know and i'll ask Scribe to send u a formal invite.

drew the below sticker for our friends at the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, using one of my favourite quotes from that chapter of history ~ "I call it a darn solid mass of different colours and tribes, blended together, woven, bound, interlocked, tongue and grooved and glued together in one body". an explicitly anti-racist uprising of coal miners, 100 years ago, 40 years before the civil rights movement, in the same Appalachian mountains that are today routinely dismissed as permanently and unforgivably backward.also rejigged the mural designs i did for them into these screenprinted stickers:

did the above work paid only by u patreon supporters cos the museum doesn't have much money (they did offer me some so no shade to them, but they have very little $ as u might imagine). if anyone wants any of the stickers, u can become a supporter of the museum or hit me up im happy to send. also, im gonna do a big mail out soon to ppl who have become supporters here in the last few months (thankyou for ur patience!!!!)

someone called the OG Auspol Shitposter made the above meme template based off of the dumb drawing of Scomo that i did a while ago, if anyone wants to use it feel free hahah

we are coming up to May Day which is genuinely exciting imo. i made this poster for a big in-person celebration in Western Australia that was planned until recently - sadly it got cancelled last minute, with the novel coronavirus cited as the concern!? they must have only just heard of it lol.

instead, they are making shirts with the design on them now, and had me get rid of the event details from the design and change the text to read "celebrate apart” :-|
fingers crossed for a huge in-person event there next year.

u can get one of the shirts here if u want, they were made in WA and they're only $20 including postage.

melbourne’s may day is shaping up to be a good one. years ago as the labour movement gradually shat itself, celebrations went from being held *on may day*, with tens of thousands of people walking off the job, to being held on the sunday closest to may 1st, so as to be less disruptive. this sucks and shld be reversed, there has been a small contingent trying to correct it over recent years, getting back to marking international workers day on the same day as the rest of planet earth, but melbournes official may day committee has been a bit stubborn. fortunately this year, May 1st itself happens to coincidentally fall on the sunday closest to May day (!), so both events will happen on the same day. the hope is that this will be a bit of a factory reset, and next year we can stick with the may 1st date for getting together. Joe Toscano is running this anarchist walking tour in the morning before the usual festivities:

designed this colouring book for the SA May Day Committee, if anyone wants a copy let me know im happy to mail u one. there are around a dozen pages in the booklet, i will put a few of them below:

drew this cos i keep getting shat off by hearing about CEOs from Amazon / Starbucks / etc saying that they don't want a union coming between the employer and the worker, as if the union is an external entity :

i have work in a few exhibitions atm which is unusual, one of them is a one day only thing happening this afternoon / evening at Goodspace in Sydney, with work by Nicky Minus, Judy Kuo Hollie Moly and other agit-prop artists 🙃

another is a retrospective of 5+ years of Climarte Poster Projects, which is a yearly poster exhibition about climate change, usually just taking place on the streets of Melbourne but this year it's also in a gallery. these are the ppl who i made that big 'Just Transitions' poster and the 'Make the yarra swimmable' piece for. there are 30 or so different street posters on display at 120 Bridge rd Richmond, Wed - Fri 12 midday to 5pm and Saturdays 1pm to 5pm.

there is now a pretty comprehensive digital walk-through of the Museum of English Rural Life exhibition about the Commons that i was part of recently.

okay i might leave it there thanks for the continuing support it means alot!!!! talk to u next month, hope some of u can make it to the book launch on the 2nd of June and dont forget u can pre-order it from here if u want. sorry i dont have copies to mail u all, its weird to be doing this through a publisher it's pretty cool though they rly HELP with a lot of STUFF, very strange after like 15 years of exclusively DIY sludgery. i thanked patreon support in the acknowledgements page of the book, honestly i wldn't have been able to make the thing without ur help, i worked out that i prolly got paid about 80 cents an hour over the 5 years of making it, tru labour of love, but this Patreon helped me keep going and make a proper go of it <3 i hope you're all keeping well

too bad if your name becomes a verb

Hey mates,

Last week i finished this comic about the history of boycotts, how special they can be, their limitations and so on. The first boycott ever organised was against an upper class brit called Captain Charles Boycott. an entire village in Ireland turned their back on him when he upped their rents following a famine. Basically a multi-industry, massive criss-crossing solidarity strike, but just against *one guy* lmao. a general strike rly, but only visible to one person.

I rly enjoyed working on this, fun to do a shorter punchier thing after getting through the sludge of making the longform book.

I will print it up as a zine soon enough, and mail out a bunch of copies to u guys. Meanwhile pls dont share this email around tho, because the comic hasn’t actually come out yet, The Nib who commissioned the piece might have further edits and cld get pissed im not sure.

I drew this street poster for the campaign against the massive gas terminal that they’re planning to build in Corio Bay, Geelong, where I grew up:

I have put a more ~universal~ version of the design on the ‘downloadable art’ section of my website (it's also on the Just Seeds site), in case other campaigns want to add their own text and use it for different purposes, feel free it has a "creative commons" license :

Below is this month’s drawing for Overland, it’s kind of stupid but it was relaxing n playful to draw at least!!

Drew this for some comrades in Adelaide who have seen a huge increase in nazi stickers around town, and wanted to print up something proactive to cover them up with:

A few different unions were involved in printing them, and distributing them to members. I think they’re gonna post me some as thanks for drawing it, so if u want a couple let me know and i’ll post some on. or if u want a stack u can print some yourself if u want
https://www.samwallman.com/downloadable-art 

Some other unions in South Australia had this drawing of Scomo printed up as stickers in the lead-up to their recent state election. 

There was some shitty tory politician lady on the ABC on election night who mentioned the sticker, calling it a disgusting disc, cheers to the CEPU comrade who handed it to her at the polling booth and to Alex who let me know that she mentioned on the telly, it was a buzz to hear that it pissed her off. I know we want to win things and build power but it’s also okay to kind of just want to piss off our enemies right, “is your hate pure Eddie” etc

I also drew the below simplistic anti-Scomo drawing, based on an old street poster style of illustration by Robbie Conal, who has been doing these portraits of politicians for nearly 40 years

Which attracted this (fair enough) comment from some rando on facebook:

I get what they mean, it’s sometimes annoying that my practise has to be trapped in the realm of “the image”, vision is v limited being so inherently surface level, sucks that movie villains are always fugly etc, but ALSO if we can’t depict the goblins that rule our lives as goblins well then i don’t know!!!! 

My bf’s little sister shat herself with joy recently when she realised that the words ‘heart’ and ‘earth’ are spelt with the same letters / mean the same thing, it was very cute. Also she loves her rubik's cube so we made this for her

It’s rare that i do a ‘kid friendly’ drawing, so i thought i’d also chuck it up on my website if anyone wants to print it out for a young earth lover that you know, its available here along with the last several images in this update.

if you’re into “people’s art” or whatever u call it, i highly recommend making a cup of tea and sitting down for a while with this database of posters about Palestine, there are a huge number of them collected on this website and scrolling through them has a pretty amazing cumulative effect, esp if u click *Scroll full size* so they fill the screen nicely:  https://www.palestineposterproject.org/list_posters
They recently added my ‘Fight Apartheid from where you stand’ piece to the database

ABC’s Compass just did a profile of old mate Safdar Ahmed, its a very moving episode about his approach to comics-journalism, his muslim death metal band Hazeen and art making as therapy / a healing process. u can watch it on iview here. also, the exhibition that Safdar, Nicky and I had earlier this year in Sydney 'Panels that Transform: Comics and Activism', can now be walked through online via this neat virtual exhibition thing, eat ya hole out metaverse. 

speaking of the metaverse, a new dystopian privilege theory just dropped..... this quote is from US billionaire Marc Andreessen who is very invested in Zuckerbergs vision. the quote was found by good egg James Hennessy (whose free Substack about technology is always interesting). Hennessy's words follow Andreessens:

“Your question is a great example of what I call Reality Privilege. This is a paraphrase of a concept articulated by Beau Cronin: "Consider the possibility that a visceral defense of the physical, and an accompanying dismissal of the virtual as inferior or escapist, is a result of superuser privileges." A small percent of people live in a real-world environment that is rich, even overflowing, with glorious substance, beautiful settings, plentiful stimulation, and many fascinating people to talk to, and to work with, and to date... the vast majority of humanity, lacks Reality Privilege -- their online world is, or will be, immeasurably richer and more fulfilling than most of the physical and social environment around them in the quote-unquote real world.

The Reality Privileged, of course, call this conclusion dystopian, and demand that we prioritize improvements in reality over improvements in virtuality. To which I say: reality has had 5,000 years to get good, and is clearly still woefully lacking for most people; I don't think we should wait another 5,000 years to see if it eventually closes the gap. We should build -- and we are building -- online worlds that make life and work and love wonderful for everyone, no matter what level of reality deprivation they find themselves in." - Andreessen

"Not really sure where the “5000 years” part comes from, but anyway. It’s a very honest statement of intent from someone that is trying to reshape the tech industry and by extension society more broadly. It’s also strange way of building a moral justification for a future that most would agree is mostly driven by commercial, not humanitarian, impulses.

Most people laughed at the wholesale lifting of the word ‘metaverse’ from Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, where the virtual world is a fleeting escape from a horrible reality. Here we have one of the flagbearers of that prospective future saying, “Yeah, that’s exactly it – and that’s good!” Implicit also is the idea that the developing world isn’t going to get much nicer, and that an escape into the digital is the only path forward. Hence the trollish deployment of the word ‘privilege’.” - Hennessy

My old friend Hugh D. A. Goldring wrote the below about the metaverse soon after Zuckerberg put out that creepy walk-through video... i don't heaps agree with his concrete fatalism, the future isn't set in stone but this vision is still worth considering imo:

"At first only very annoying people will use meta. And then as the technology improves and it becomes the default platform for retailers and public bodies people will be compelled to use it to access things that used to be available elsewhere. Then it'll hit a tipping point where everyone you know is in there especially since it's going to be engineered to be addictive. And as the user base grows the revenue will grow with it so they'll have the money and user feedback they need to make it suck less.

But it won't. It'll suck more and more but it'll swallow society anyway because it sucks more efficiently.

Either that or FB is too big to pull this off and some other company is going to do this. But there can be no question it's coming. Watch the trend lines because somewhere in the next 20 years the awfulness of capitalism and the climate crisis will converge with the improving user experience of some metaverse or other and after that point the general consensus will be that it's better to be online. We're already well on our way."

here's a drawing of my friends dog to end on a lighter note!!!!

get in sis we're cancelling lawn

hi hello hope everyones doing okay. here are some anti-lawn memes that i liked, in contrast to the doom of a new war!!!!!!

i know lawns are good for kids to play on, for picnics and for sport...... but i cldnt fit that in the drawing below, and also that doesnt mean we need to cover the earth in the stuff!! Overland will publish the drawing on Monday i think.

if you have any suggestions about what i might draw about for next months piece pls let me know, u can comment on this post or email me.

months ago when i asked u guys to vote on what i shld work on next, and the most popular option was a piece about Salvatore, the 200kg fur seal who lived in the Yarra river for several months last year. i tried to get The Nib to commission me to make a really long (indulgent?!?!) comic essay on him, and after lots of back and forth about it, they asked me to produce a....four panel comic lol. i am nearly finished with it now, should come out soon, i will let you know. meanwhile here are some bits:

the federal election is going to be called soon, probably this coming week. Morrison must have such a stiffy with this war kicking off, i can smell it from here, it will be great for him no doubt. Jeff Sparrow mentioned how perfect it wld be for his electoral fortunes too if the queen dies too omfg can u imagine, if she's not dead already.
i usually prefer more of a "play the ball not the man" approach to politics, but with an election coming up i thought i would try to draw something. i find it extremely hard to draw about electoral politics in a way that isn't annoying i tell you what!

i put a high resolution version of this drawing on the 'downloadable art' section of my website in case anyone wants to print some or do whatever with them samwallman.com/downloadable-art

I did the same with these drawings also:

drew the above piece a while ago, after hearing that some of the more conservative parts of the labour movement have taken to weaponising a reluctance to fight or organise properly, claiming that striking and taking industrial action is inherently macho or masculine, and therefore kind of sexist. truly deranged, try telling that to farm workers / cleaners, slash every woman i know lol. hopefully the drawing is a subtle intervention into this stuff, its all a bit of a mine field, esp when ppl are deploying this kind of stuff in such bad faith

above is how the 'gay blood' poster turned out, i sent the rough sketch in the last update. looking forward to getting back to australia and putting some up outside blood donation sites :-)

had an extremely special time learning some of the *actively erased* histories of the massive uprisings that happened a hundred years ago down in appalachia, and painting two murals in the mine wars museum in matewan west virginia. huge thanks to Tom, Shaun, Wilma and Terry <3 hoping to make some more art about the stuff i learnt down there a bit further down the track.

normal country

the mural i painted at Red Ink community library and organising space in Providence rhode island went well i think, similar style to the ones above, extremely keen to keep cutting my teeth on these things.

disgusting to see nazis attack the space a few days ago, at a celebration of the anniversary of the communist manifesto. u can see footage of the fuckwits, who outnumbered the leftists 10 to 1 and busted someones lip :-/ here if u want. luv to be inside of a country where a lawmaker can respond to the attack with a take like this, just without consequence:

i got a lot out of this presentation called "LOOK LOUD: What is Visual Strategy? Projecting Power in the Street" which was recorded and u can watch here. "A webinar filled with practical tips about how your union or other organisation presents its message and power to the world, the joy of making beautiful and effective signage together, and how to stage rallies for maximum impact"

Garage Press Distro have printed more copies of that "google 40% of cops" sticker, and are selling them for cost price dirt cheap, like 10 quality vinyl stickers for $2.50

the MUA Art Prize "The Struggles That Made Us" deadline has been extended til March 30th. get into it / tell your art making friends! $$$$$ up for grabs. https://www.mua.org.au/struggles-made-us-design-prize 

the brilliant film Women of Steel is premiering on ABC TV Plus on International Working Womens Day, sunday March 6th, 8.30pm then showing again on tuesday March 8th 8.30pm, maybe it will also be on iview probably  Panels That Tranform, the exhibition that me Nicky Minus and Safdar Ahmed had in sydney closed recently. there is this neat video showing some of the work and featuring our friend and curator Can Yalcinkaya: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnqAGI1em4U&feature=youtu.be  hopefully the exhibition will tour to some regional galleries soon we will see!

thankyou for the support talk to you next month! <3

january

hey there, hope everyones keeping well, its so cold here in the US and most of u are boiling hot in australia by the sounds of things so i guess we're all united by deranged weather!!!!

was a fun challenge to try and draw a largely wordless cartoon that describes *what the union is* to workers new to the concept at an UWU chicken abattoir, where ppl mostly speak languages other than english. apparently the boss has been harassing the majority female workforce so the cartoon pushes back against that treatment, as the way to try and communicate the idea of solidarity. I think we’re going to put translations of the text in the border all around the thing. 

That was literally my only paid gig in the last couple of months, December n January are always pretty quiet, so thanks for keeping me going. i didnt get paid anything for literally any of the work in the rest of this update, oopsie

im headed down to Matewan in rural West Virginia next week to paint a small mural in the Mine Wars Museum there. The Mine Wars are how ppl describe the biggest labour uprising in US history (like literal armed struggle peppered thru the Appalchian mountains, massacres, aggressively and proactively erased history, a dramatically altered industry in the aftermath blablabla), which happened a century ago last year. I’m painting the above Mother Jones inspired piece on the wall in the research space there. The museum exists against all odds, and has next to no budget, so you guys are paying me to do it, and to get there, so thanku 4 that

Starting tomorrow I’m painting this design on the wall of Red Ink, a socialist community space here in Providence:

It's based on the slogan they used when founding the space, a karl marx quote "to be radical is to grasp things by the root", but i cut the first half of the sentence for the mural design cos i feel like it's low key corny to self identify as radical in certain contexts. the community centre also has fuck all money so i’m painting the mural w donated labour

Really excited to cut my teeth a bit more with these murals, build my confidence a little, n then get back to australia and do sum on some more outward facing, public walls. Pls let me know if you know of any walls that might be hungry

Rough sketch for a drawing that I mentioned in previous update, about the Red Cross's ban on blood donations from men who sleep with men, hoping to finish it off soon

Finally getting my booster tomorrow morning, so i finished off this photo frame for Facebook so that other poofters or whoever else can use it!! if anyone uses facebook anymore!!! i just tried to add it to facebook but apparently they only let a couple of big vetted organisations make those profile picture frames these days  :-C but if u are one of the like 3 people that the drawing might appeal to and if u wanna use the graphic and manually make a profile pic feel free u can download it from here https://www.samwallman.com/downloadable-art 

i drew the below 'KEEP GOING' piece as a phone background, if anyone wants it, was a chance for me to experiment with a kind of different drawing style. You can download a high resolution version of it from the same part of my website linked above.

I have no idea if ppl are into this sort of thing, phone wallpapers - if anyone is, pls lemme know and i can make more of them they're pretty easy. i guess i wld make more optimistic, struggley type designs, as positive reminders when u look at yr phone, but if u have any other ideas of what you’d like to see as a phone wallpaper pls lemme know. also if u do try using it as ur wallpaper and it doesnt quite fit or work out pls let me know.

At that same url u can also download this ‘union bug’ for your own purposes, esp if u work for an organisation that does lots of printing:

i will cut and paste what i wrote about it on social media because im lazy:
“a bug is a stamp or label that indicates that an object was produced by union labour. This kind of icon has historically been discretely added to designs that are produced by workers who are union members, as a way to show support for collectivism and to attempt to make our labour less abstracted. This particular design also includes a head-nod to the fact that we live, work and organise on Aboriginal land."

I plan to keep adding stuff to that ‘downloadable art’ page from time to time, that people can save for free and print themselves. there are a handful of high res graphics up there now, I might make a Patreon only page with some more stuff on it sometime.
When i was isolating with coorvid i also made a new page on my website with all those ‘held in common labour slogans’ collected on it, there are over 50 of them now, gonna keep plugging away with that series until i’ve made 100. 

as always pls lemme know if u want high res versions of any of them for organising purposes, thats what they’re made for, or if u want any translated or anything. i recently tinkered with one so that it wld look more specific to a friends particular industry at his request, so it might resonate more with his fellow members, always happy to do that sort of thing

There happens to be an electrical union headquarters like ten minutes walk from my boyfriends mums place where we’re staying here in Providence in Rhode Island. she told me about it cos she always notices the amazing lights they have out front of the building, next to the massive fuck-off solar panels. Their christmas light display this year could be described as borderline manic lol, “if the electrical union can’t put on a light show then we may as well pack up and go home”. anyway this week i hit them up to see if they might let me work out of their space while i’m here, and they gave me their fucken boardroom to use whenever :.-O :.-O
extremely grateful to have a quiet and warm space to work from while im here, and kinda floored by their generosity. real “everyone on the planet lives in one country called capitalism” vibes. also “invisible criss-crossing network of international solidarity” energy

The way the left provides entry points and portals all over an otherwise hostile world reminds me of this quote from Jeff Sparrows book Communism: A Love Story, even tho he was writing about the middle of last century: “their beliefs rendered foreigners oddly familiar to each other, since each could have parachuted into the homeland of the other and oriented themselves more or less accurately in a strange political landscape, identifying allies and detecting enemies, and charting the general line of march. Wherever their origin, whatever their occupation, the movement gave them a common identity, subordinating differences and binding strangers together, not just with each other, not simply with the oppressed of far-off lands, but with the achievements of those who had struggled before”

the US is about to open its first safe injecting space ever(!). as a small gesture of support I took a big print of the ’Safe injecting rooms save lives’ poster i made last year to this space, which has been set up in a main street of Providence, to serve as a kind of interactive exhibition and an example of how the future site will function. 

Their setup is an effort to normalise the idea of this kind of space, demonstrate how it will look and function and so on, and apparently it has been met with very little resistance, which rules, hopefully the nimbys stay unorganised. 

It was funny to talk to the workers about how they came about designing the space (partly thru studying australian safe injecting rooms, naw, seems we don’t *only* export racist border policies who’d hav thought), and they said that they intentionally made it as boring and kinda sterile as they could to reinforce that it’s a benign, everyday presence in the community. But then they had to balance that with making it feel homely and cosy for the users who will frequent the space, who they want to feel invited and safe.

May a thousand safe injecting rooms bloom!!!!!!!!!!!!

poster by 'Harm Reduxx PVD'

Don’t think i shared this scrappy banner here that Nicky Minus and I painted a couple of months ago, based on fellow Workers Art Collective member Nic Robertsons design. with fabric loops stitched by my mum <3

Ansell are a hideous corportation, deploying debt bondage in countries where they are less accountable, beating the shit out of unionists on occasion, firing active members etc. we met up outside their corporate headquarters in Richmond, felt like a small thing and it was, but it was a day of lots of small actions across the world, and probably it meant something to ppl thru out the supply chain in other countries to know that fellow workers are taking their fight to the HQ. was interesting to think about the interconnectedness of all the industries linked to the company, especially as Jerome Small spoke on the day - Ansell products are obviously used in hospitals here, but they’re also used in warehousing, abattoirs, anywhere with PPL really (which is just about every single workplace these days). Thinking about how we might try to make their supply chains visible felt borderline psychedelic, cos the chains of labour that produce and distribute their products zig-zag all over the planet it’s wild. It’s not just warehousing workers picking and packing, but also the harvesting of rubber plants, the processing of raw materials, the freights, retailers, the end consumers and all the rest. so many places you can imagine a global union movement with teeth intervening - it shldn’t matter if people in only one location at any time are being fucked over by the company, ideally any other site along the supply chain should be able to respond to make them feel the heat. i think we’re a long way off that happening but on the day, it felt like there was a fumbling path to that sort of thing maybe. if u want to get involved in the campaign u can contact Australia Asia Worker Links, its been going for years and im sure they'd appreciate anyone who wants to get involved.

on the topic of international solidarity stuff, it has been extremely cool to witness a rare instance of us artists not being total egomaniacs lol, heeding the call from Palestinians to join the BDS campaign by boycotting the recent Sydney Festival, the cats got herded. There is a good write-up of the campaign here including this line “the effusive response to the boycott call has been unprecedented, in fact historic. It is being cited as the most effective, creative and impactful campaign targeting complicit Israeli sponsorship of an international arts event in Australia, and indeed one of the most successful in the world."

anonymous mural in Gaza a couple of days ago, riffing off the Sydney Festival logo

okay i’ll leave it there i think, i hope i wasn't too rambley with this update... thanks to the few new supporters who have signed up recently, I will mail you some stuff when i get back to australia i wont forget!!!! and i will write more next month <3

sam

ps lets prove this wrong

not so novel anymore!!!!

i contracted the novel coronavirus fkn woops as. i got it just TWO DAYS before my booster shot appointment was scheduled. i was so excited i had even drawn this in preparation:

the ppl i have been spending time with who had already had their booster seem to have dodged the bullet, which is a pretty concrete vindication of the vaccine. my first two shots earlier in the year are also holding me in good stead so far - my symptoms are very mild, feels almost certainly omicron, thankfully. the first 36 hours of symptoms involved a bit of a fever, i felt cloud-brained and had a mild cough, but now i'm feeling almost totally back to normal 3 or 4 days in. will keep isolating and looking out the window and drawing at this highway-side motel for the full ten days tho...... even tho yesterday the CDC ("Centre for Disease Control" or "Cant Disrupt Commerce") suddenly halved the isolation period to 5 days, and didn't even recommend ppl do a test before they head back out into the world :-V :-V

only 62% of ppl in the US are vaccinated, and omicron infections are doubling almost every day. if pulling the rip cord and rly leaning into the "everyone is going to get it" rhetoric has eugenicist undertones, i can't help but think that this might also:

"nurses drinking purple cocktails, the morning after nightshift 19/12/21":

been watching lots of stuff cos im fritzled indoors with this virus, last night i finished the second season of Total Control which i hiiiighly recommend. u can watch the whole thing on iview or if ur not in australia u can stream it on Goojara (an amazing streaming website that is keeping the piracy dream of the early 2010s alive, seems to have just about everything on it)

my time in the US has been rly great so far for the most part, finally got to meet my partners family n see them all reunited, and then maybe infect some of them with a disease????remains 2 be seen. hoping to get up to Buffalo to visit the first unionised Starbucks (!) when i'm back outside again. may have a small voluntary mural project lined up at a special place down in Matewan, fingers crossed. if anyone has any other leads for walls i might be able to paint here plz lemme know, anywhere around north-east of the country, im especially interested in walls that happen to be indoors (easier in winter, more able to control the light to do w a projector, less $ needed for undercoats of paint and graffiti protection etc). my old dream of being a travelling labour agitator like someone from the early 1900s is half cooked but still stuck up on a wall in my brain. a woman at a picket line a couple of months ago was asking me lots about what i do, and after i tried explaining she said "oh so you're just a shit-stirrer" which made me feel weird, took it as both a compliment and an insult which i think is how she intended it.

there's almost exactly one month left for entries into ‘The Struggles That Made Us’, the MUA's poster design competition, as part of their 150th bday. $5000+ in prizes for artworks that celebrate maritime workers history. pls let any artists / illustrators know and encourage them to enter!! http://mua.org.au/struggles-made-us-design-prize

the above drawing is my last drawing for Overland for the year, which i drew thanks to the suggestion of Lachlan Musicman. it is based on a quote from an old leaflet from the 1970s that pops up on social media from time to time. it might seem tangential, but to me it represents an attempt to explore a bit more specificity around what a 'just transition' might involve. i think that's gonna be a big focus of my work over the next year, as ppl fight to limit the fallout of climate change and also prepare ourselves for what effects we are already locked into.

was stoked to work with Alex McInnis and United Workers Union on a drawing about how low-carbon care work might relate to the climate crisis, and what members rights and obligations are, not only to the people they support through their care work, but to themselves and their co-workers. 

the "right to strike" is today ofc severely curtailed in australia, but there are real protections for workers who walk off the job due to health and safety concerns. UWU have been proactive in educating their members about this, and as such we have seen workers exercise their walk-off rights during heatwaves and other climate related threats to health. there are hopes that we might come to see these strike provisions expanded outward.

i worked as a disability support worker for almost a decade, and remember vividly how employers moralise and weaponise the care you feel for the people you work with, and use it against you, in order to protect their status quo. hoping to work on more stuff the fact that articulates that care for clients and care for yrself and your co-workers throughout supply chains (and the environment?!?!) are indivisible and all smooshed together.

drew the below pic for the health workers who walked off the job at Royal Adelaide Hospital and Queen Elizabeth Hospital in SA, fed up with understaffing, safety issues, job insecurity and attempts at privatisation.

im obsessed with those bots that automate art for you if u just provide them with a few keywords.... convinced that they're gonna compete with us illustrators for a lot of our work soon enough (fair enough i spose!!!?!!?). i typed the title of my book "our members be unlimited: a comic about workers and their unions" into https://app.wombo.art and it came up with these very good alternative covers, oop

happy 2 say that the 'make the yarra swimmable' poster has been selected as part of next years CLIMARTE project, which means there will be 100 or so giant prints of the piece stuck up in the streets around the place. if u want to print sum yourself feel free, u can download a PDF from here. 

im still working on that long form comic about the yarra river seal, i'm in the process of pitching it to an outlet, will see how that shakes out and keep u posted.
also working on another piece about harm reduction stuff, a piece about abortion freedoms and the Red Cross's ban on gay blood 👻

also these two very undercooked drafts :

ok i think i will leave it there! thanks for the support and for helping to pay for the motel room while i exorcisism!!!!!! fuck coronavirus!!! pls get your booster shot!

sickos

the shirts are finally existing. i have sent a bunch out already, some of the sizes are starting run rly low (like only one left in sum sizes) so it's a first in best dressed kinda situation.

made an online store for patreon supporters only, which i think will be the only way to get  the shirts since i didnt have that many of them made up, and i dont rly wanna turn into more of a retail outlet lol, wld rather spend my time drawing
https://www.samwallman.com/patreonsupporters
password is PAYTRONE .
or if cash is tight + u rly want one just let me know and ill send ya or set up a bigger discount or whatever

i didnt realise most ppl no matter gender seem to prefer "mens" shirt cuts, so if all things are equal to u, pls choose the womens option on the dropdown menu when ur choosing, if u dont hav a strong preference. as always, 25% discount code is PAYTRONE if u want to use that.

in a very surreal feeling development, middle of next month looks like im going to the US to finally meet my partners family and stay with them for a while. i plan to paint a bunch of murals over there and continue plugging away on my usual work, extra excited about it cos there seems to be a bit of a strike wave happening over there atm. but yeah because of this trip, pls get ur shirt orders in by like first wk of next month cos i'll have to stop shipping stuff out soon after that. also wanted to say, im not gonna spend patreon bux on airline tickets or daquari's or whatever, hahaha, will keep using the $ to offset the production of political art that there's no budget for. i plan to paint several murals over there, try and cut my teeth in that medium a bit more, so if u have any hookups for good union offices / community spaces / activist bookstores / workplaces or any walls like that pls link me up!!!!! orgs needn't have budgets cos im planning to use Patreon coin for the paint and materials and time.

As i mentioned in the last update, sydney bookshop Better Read Than Dead has reneged on key conditions agreed upon as a result of the RAFFWU members industrial action earlier this year. they had a rally on Friday that attracted 150+ ppl which is pretty great. the brilliant Anwen Crawford spoke there and put things nicely - "this is the union movement of the future. It’s young, it’s militant, and most importantly, it’s not stuck like a barnacle to the hull of the Australian Labor Party”. u can follow and support the BRTD dispute here.

finished the poster about the campaign to make the Yarra swimmable, thanks to Leigh Ewbank and Dylan McConnell for the chats when i was developing it. still trying to work out how to get some big prints of it stuck up in the streets, fingers crossed that'll be a goer. this is the finished piece, now with the text added:

trying extremely hard not to draw new shit while i focus on tying off some existing commitments, but i cldnt help it when one of the delegates at Country Road said this at the picket line on Friday:

i wish i cld have mentioned in the drawing that there *was* a hard picket at the site for two days, nothing in nothing out, until the supreme court once again served an injunction with really serious threats if they didnt stop blocking the gates. extremely frustrating.
the workers then started leaf-letting the ring-in scabs as they entered the gates, trying to hook them up with better paying jobs elsewhere (!!!). just on the day i was there, they had turned 20 cars away with this tactic, and the carpark was almost empty. pretty clever pivot in the face of another disgraceful injunction, and maybe part of why they won the dispute yesterday...

came across this recently so thought id include it here, a rare older piece of mine that i don't-hate, 'the nation state of the internet' made for Overland in 2015.

thanks for the support, dont forget 2 order a shirt sooner than later if u want one cos i think some sizes are gonna run dry soon <3

ombu

hello mates. happy to show yas the cover of the book here, first time it is having air blow across it:

it went to print last week, 255 pages worth, after nearly a year working at Amazon and almost 5 years of writing and drawing the thing. biggest undertaking so far, for sure. i definitely wld not have had as much time and space to give it proper thought and detail if it weren't for u ppls support, so thanku infinitely for that. its will come out in June in australia and November next year in the US, so its still a while off, but im fkn DUN and its out of my hands now. feels good!!!!!! cant wait to show u some more chunks of it soon, and to think about what might come next.

drew the above piece but not sure if it works the way i had hoped. at least i exorcised the idea and left it on the page, it can now live in the patreon cemetery. before i drew it, i hoped it was gonna be my monthly Overland piece, but my editor there was graciously like "yeep if....you.......rly think so??". so i had another crack and ended up with this different, bigger piece, which is getting close to finished:

im yet to add the text yet cos im still working on the script, that'll go in where the squiggly lines are. hoping this one can tie into the existing campaigns to restore the river, and maybe be one of those big street posters, we will see how it shakes out.

as Norman Gunston said, the yarra used to be so polluted that you could catch a bream already wrapped in newspaper.
this cld be us:

Got these shirts a couple of days ago, which is exciting.  They’re rly nicely printed with water-based inks by my old friend Stewie at Gauntlet Press in Footscray (get him to print ur shit!!!), and the shirts themselves are made by union members at Qualitops in Reservoir.

I dont wanna get them into shops or hock them far and wide, i just plan to get them to patreon supporters, will post em out first to people who have supported here at higher levels for over 6 months, or who hav chucked me over a certain $ amount since they signed up. i’m gonna email u ppl specifically separately to this post asking for yr size and design preference, will do that soon. and then prolly next week i will email out a discount code and private web store link and wotnot so u other supporters can buy one if u want. Shld be able to ship them out in time for xmas no worries. Also if you want to buy anything else from my online store for xmas gift or anything, the patreon code giving 25% off is permanently set up there, just enter discount code “PAYTRONE” when u get to checkout. or just tell me if u want anything for free lol.

Also, this is boring but I’m gonna revise the patreon pledges / rewards, cos they’re a bit dusty and out-dated, esp since some of them were tied to the completion of the book (including ppl in acknowledgements etc). so yeah time for a bit of a redux. if u feel like i owe u sum stuff or there's anything in particular you'd like me to send you in the mail, feel free to hit me up, as always.

'Panels that transform', the group exhibition featuring work by Safdar Ahmed, Nicky Minus and me is finally gonna open next week i think, after lots of not so novel coronavirus delays, thanx to the tireless work of Can Yalcinkaya and Justine Lloyd. It will show at the MQ Art Gallery in Sydney wednesday - friday 10am-3pm each week until i think the 10th of December, and maybe regional galleries after that. u can check here for more info or msg me if ur thinking of heading out there n i can try find out more info.

also for Sydney ppl, tomorrow saturday at 10am there is an action at the corner of King and Mary streets in Newtown, in support of RAFFWU Better Read Than Dead booksellers industrial action. they won their huge strike a few months ago, and reached an in-principal agreement, but the boss isn't following through on all of his promises. pls head along and support their efforts if u can, show the store that there is community support. more info can be found here.

Stoked that the above poster has been added to the ‘Celebrate Peoples History’ project that Josh Macphee has been running for the last two decades out of the US, which i have long admired n learned a bunch of stuff from. 

You can browse all 150+ of the mostly risograph posters, and buy any of them for $5 a pop here: https://justseeds.org/project/cph/  here are a few of my old favys :

draft concept and final version of new piece for the UWU farm worker campaign (with about a dozen less fingers in the final version). these guys last week saw piece-rates in the industry get outlawed finally, pretty big deal imo.

it is a shameless redux of this old IWW drawing by Ralph Chaplin from a hundred years ago:

ok more to come about the shirts soon but i think i'll send this off now!
will chuck in another half finished drawing 4 good measure:

<3

spring update

hi commeroids

the book is coming along well, yesterday i finally finished the linework for the cover, just gotta add the blurb and endorsements n stuff. i got a bit carried away with the design, its a wraparound thing, with fold-out flaps that then bleed onto double page spreads on the inside covers front and back. this is how it looks as one giant image, but in the end it'll look a bit more carved up, and coloured:

the final files all have to be sent off to print at the end of this month, i can taste the freedom, less than a fortnight. lockdown is as awful as it is necessary, but yeah it cldn't have come at a better time for this project - especially if restrictions start to ease right when i send off the files omfg.

in the last email i sent out, i asked what u think shld be drawn next. a piece about Salvatore the seal, the 200 kilogram fur seal who has lived in the yarra river most of this year got the most votes. i started working on something about him, but the script blew out into something much chunkier, cos i included some bits from conversations i'd had with friends while we looked for him, my secret desire to see him eat a dog, some stuff about the campaign to make the yarra swimmable, how quick our attitudes to animals like seals and whales have changed over recent decades and what that might mean for being able to rapidly re-contextualise nature in the fight against climate change, blablah. i want to make it a longer format comic, as the next thing i work on after i get this book tied off. will keep u posted, but yeah just wanted to flag that im onto it, since it got the most votes, it just might take me a bit longer than planned! this is all as news came in that Salvatore hasn't been seen in a week, meaning he may well hav gone back out to the bay, gods peed!!!!!

above is a screenshot from a video that shows him having a good last look at a punter before he likely pushed off 😭 there's also this rly nice Radio National feature on him

I finally dropped off those blank tshirts to my screen printer last week, finally getting onto that now the weather is looking like getting warmer. there's gonna be one black shirt, with that 'no permanent victories no permanent defeats' design on it (based off your votes from way back), and a white shirt with the 'don't date people who are rude to service staff' on it. i haven't worked out details yet but they are made for patreon supporters sweaty hands somehow, will update u once ive picked them up

drew the above poster for the Maritime Union of Australia members at QUBE in Fremantle, whose strike is now almost into its eleventh week. the MUA is selling prints to raise money for the workers strike fund https://www.muashop.org.au/products/limited-edition-sam-wallman-scab-smashing-special-solidarity-poster
fun to draw scabs and to be able to go so hard with the depiction of them for something official! i love how feral the MUA is

drew the above for the CFMEU in SA. promise im gonna do less uniony art starting.........soon. promise to stop being this, lol:

the Unsettled exhibition at the australian museum in sydney reopened on Monday, where it will hopefully run uninterrupted until January. extremely honoured to have a drawing in there

shout out to Cam for this pic of his youngn at the exhibition:

i have a few prints of the above drawing, risographed in peach and blue by yr favourite worker-owned print collective Glom Press, if anyone wants one let me know. cannot wait for the day that drawing no longer makes sense.

i am getting through catching up on mailing people stuff. i was able to get an hour of access to my studio last week, so was able to grab some boxes of things n have been packing stuff up for ppl from home since then. im just over half way through posting stuff to new supporters and ppl who have bought things. if i havent got to you yet i will soon, thanx for your patience

im looking forward to this public forum coming up, hosted by CARF, "the hidden history of anti-fascist activism in melbourne" tuesday 26th of october at 6pm

the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism are selling some 'Pro Vax / Pro Union / Anti-fascist' posters made by fellow Workers Art Collective members https://store.carf.melbourne/ or if anyone wants the files to print larger numbers of the posters up yrself for your neighbourhood let me know

and the latest in the series "memes that said it better than when i tried to draw it":

vs:

<3