Colleagues and students at the University of Brighton are slowly coming to terms with the passing of much loved lecturer Graham Rawle in August. Rawle taught at the University between 2002 and 2023, and was an inspirational lecturer and tutor to a generation of students in the School of Art and Media. As a contributor to the MA in Sequential Design and Illustration, he brought both his mischievous sense of humour and renowned career of experimental practice to the classroom, which always proved to be an enriching experience for attendees to his workshops and classes.
A number of University of Brighton alumni, who have gone on to become award winning graphic novelists and illustrators, think of him fondly:
Cartoonist and musician Danny Noble remembers that: “Graham was kind and supportive as well as being a sharp wit. It was a lovely, lucky thing to see the cogs whirring in his talented mind when he was our tutor… it was so bloomin lovely and gave me so much confidence”. Noble has subsequently illustrated childrens books Tilly and the Time Machine, and Junkyard Jack and the Horse That Talked written by Adrian Edmondson, and authored the graphic novel Shame Pudding.
Artist Myfanwy Tristram adds: “Graham made projects that were based on bonkers premises, and required improbable reserves of both time and serendipity to complete. That’s the world view that he generously invited his students into, too, and it’s stuck with me – for better or worse!”. Tristram’s current work in progress, The Noisy Valley, which illustrates true stories of protest from the Rhondda Valley in South Wales, was shortlisted for the First Graphic Novel Prize in 2023.
And former Comics Laureate Hannah Berry sums up Rawle’s appeal to students in a nutshell: “he shared amazing projects … he was such a nice guy”. After graduating from the University of Brighton, Berry created three acclaimed graphic novels and became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
As a writer and designer, Graham Rawle produced a huge variety of eclectic projects which showed his range as an artist and cultural commentator. His books Woman’s World (2005), The Card (2012) and Overland (2018) display his extraordinary skills in graphic design and typography. They mix collage, found objects, and atypical page layouts respectively to subvert the form of the modern novel, and delight readers in their playfulness. While these books engaged Rawle’s formal skills as a researcher and practitioner in text and literary design, he is also well remembered for his absurdist newspaper cartoon Lost Consonants which ran in The Guardian in the 1990s, and were collected in 6 volumes over the course of that decade. The cartoon used a successful gimmick of taking an everyday phrase and removed one letter as inspiration for hilarious and surreal collages which constantly amused readers of the newspaper.
An interview with Rawle about his illustrated book The Card is available as a podcast on the Panel Borders blog, the University of Brighton carries a tribute to Graham Rawle’s genius as a researcher and a research guide to his novel Overland is available on the University of Brighton website.
A fond obituary in The Guardian notes that he is survived by his wife Margaret and by his brother, the actor Jeff Rawle. He will be much missed by his colleagues and former students at the University.
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