Roger Law - A Law Unto Himself
Self portrait 2011 © Roger Law
Roger Law was co-creator of the UK puppet show Spitting Image before he deported himself to Australia to explore his remaining artistic talent.
He underwent a journey of renewal in the bush that ultimately led him to China.
Roger Law used to be famous. He was the co-creator of Britain's legendary satirical puppet show Spitting Image. At its peak the show had 12 million viewers, spinoffs in Europe and Australia and a legion of fans. It lampooned leaders of the day - Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Snr and memorably, the Royal Family. When the show finally crashed in 1996, Law, exhausted and burnt out, moved to Australia seeking artistic reinvention. He found a country teeming with wildlife as surreal as anything he'd created for Spitting Image. He started drawing again.
A meeting with Chinese-Australian artist Ah Xian led to an introduction to China's Jingdezhen, a whole city famously devoted to making porcelain. Fired by the expertise of the potters and carvers of Jingdezhen, Roger Law immersed himself in making decorative pots featuring Australian sea life designs.
“It’s like the underwater world of Jacques Cousteau on a pot … a kind of search for beauty and inner calm … a silent world of colour and light.” - Ben Lewis, art critic, describing Law’s ceramics.
In A Law Unto Himself, Law tells his story with wit and wisdom - from the exhaustion of Spitting image, to a journey of discovery in Australia, to China and finally to the preparation for an exhibition of his ceramics at the revered Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Director’s statement
Like many others of my generation, I’d been a devoted follower of Spitting Image and its Australian spinoff Rubbery Figures. I’d worked on the Nine Network’s Sunday program since its early days and as that program documented the significant news stories of the week, so too did Spitting Image, albeit with far less reverence than we did.
Two decades later, I met Roger Law around a lunch table and I couldn’t believe this legend of British satire was living an apparently anonymous life in Bondi Beach. I was heading off to China to make a documentary about the contemporary art world there and Roger was the most generous of teachers. He had already spent a considerable time in China and had met many of the younger Chinese artists.
It took me much longer to discover the work that Roger himself was doing in China. With that revelation, came the need to make a film about him. Not just because I thought his drawing and ceramic work was beautiful but I was drawn to the idea that after achieving fame, Roger chose to turn his back on it and start again as an artist. This in an era when so many pursue fame for the sake of fame itself. And since meeting him, I am aware of how many times Roger has been asked to revisit Spitting Image but as he says, ‘however much money they offer, it is never enough!’
I am fascinated by the idea that we have a number of working lives and by any account, Roger is immersed in his third career (he’d started life as a cartoonist and illustrator before moving onto puppets and politics).
Law working at the Big Pot Factory, Jingdezhen, China. © Derek Au
“Watching Roger work in the dusty pottery workshops of Jingdezhen, I was again impressed by his generosity of spirit. Not only was he learning from the Chinese carvers, he was also teaching them new skills and breathing new life into the ancient motifs of Jingdezhen ceramics.” Catherine Hunter
Postscript 2024: In recent years, Roger found himself involved in the relaunch of Spitting Image. After, as he says, “living a really constructive life in Australia for 25 years … I came back and found this bastard Boris Johnson lighting fires and disappearing to watch them burn.”
Pot by Roger Law, Jingdezhen. Photograph by Derek Au
A carved praying mantis brush pot created by Roger Law and Mr Wu Song Ming. Photograph by John Lawrence Jones
REVIEW| Paul Kalina, The Age, 10 May 2012 | Artscape: A Law Unto Himself, ABC, May 15, 2012
"The name Roger Law might not ring any bells but mention Spitting Image, the political satire show he created, or his “beautifully ugly” plasticine caricatures of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Rupert Murdoch and the Queen, and you’ll be instantly familiar with him. What happened after the Spitting Image phenomenon is the subject of this neat profile. Burnt out by drink and crazy success, Law and his wife moved to Australia in 1996. Australia’s landscape and “surreal creatures” reinvigorated his passion for drawing and watercolours, but it was meeting the Australian-Chinese ceramicist Ah Xian, who in turned introduced him to the pottery workshops of Jingdezhen in China, that led to the 60-something Law embarking on a new artistic career. Peppering this cautionary tale of fame and the possibilities of new beginnings are some beautiful pieces of art.”
Roger Law, Bondi Studio 2011 © Simon Cardwell
Winner of the 2012 Australian Screen Editors Guild Adobe Award for Best Editing in a Documentary Program
Writer-Director/Catherine Hunter, Producer/Carolyn Johnson, Cinematography/ Bruce Inglis, Editor/Andrea Lang ASE, Composer/Amanda Brown, Duration 27 minutes. Produced in association with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Financed in assistance with Carolyn John Films, Catherine Hunter Productions and Naked Flame Productions. Financed in association with Screen NSW and Screen Australia.
©2011 Carolyn Johnson Films and Catherine Hunter Productions Pty Ltd
© Catherine Hunter Productions 2024