My name is Bernard Caleo. I'm a comic book performer.
I write and draw and collaborate on and edit and publish comic books.
I also teach comics at schools, universities and libraries, leading comics classes and workshops.
I talk about comics in the media.
As a performer, I make shows and perform them. Some of these shows are to do with comics, like the two-man superhero show, The MM Project which Bruce Woolley and I have been doing for 20 years. I also draw and perform kamishibai, a Japanese storytelling form from the 1930s.
Also, I make shows and comics for museums and universities and organisations to help them to get across their information in an imagination-engaging way. In this capacity I have worked for The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Water, Origin, Melbourne Museum, CSIRO and other places.
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In 2012, collaborating with filmmaker Daniel Hayward, I made a feature documentary called Graphic Novels! Melbourne! focussing on the long-form comics work of Nicki Greenberg, Mandy Ord, Pat Grant and Bruce Mutard. This project received funding from the City of Melbourne, and was supported by Readings bookshops and premiered in November 2012. Daniel and I presented it at the Angouleme Comics Festival in France, then in Berlin, Hamburg and London, in February 2013.
In 2013/2014 I was a Creative Fellow at the State Library of Victoria with historian Alex McDermott. We were researching a graphic novel history that we are making called The Devil Collects: Faust in Melbourne 1888.
During term 3 of 2014 I was an Arts Victoria 'Artist in Schools' at Fitzroy High School, running a 10 week Comics Studio with years 8, 9 and 10 students.
In May/June of 2015 I travelled to Minamisanriku in Japan with Polyglot Children's Theatre to work with temporary accommodation residents (the town was badly hit by the 2011 tsunami), and a primary school there as part of a Polyglot 'Drawbridge' projects, art-making which engages comic book artists as part of the process. We made a giant kamishibai show for kindergarten children and when we returned to Australia I wrote and drew a comic book report of the project: Momotaro Tsugi Wa? ('What next, Momotaro?) which was published both in English and Japanese versions.
In 2016:
'Graphic Shakespeare', a 20-page comics collaboration with La Trobe University academic Rob Conkie was published in Rob's book Writing Performative Shakespeares (Cambridge University Press 2016)
Alex McDermott and I are continuing work on The Devil Collects.
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Photograph taken by Tiffany Garvie
