During her stay in Australia 1992–1994, Marlies Pekarek got to know the comic artist Geraldine Searles. A friendship formed and the two artists discovered that, while their pictorial language differed significantly, the choice of their motifs was very similar. The comic A Cautionary Tale takes Marlies Pekareks sugar sculpture The Sugar Queen on a journey. Geraldine Searles created an adventurous tale around the scanned-in 3D scuplture. The Sugar Queen is taken from her original context and begins a new life as a comic protagonist.
A Cautionary Tale is an enchanting and unique work of art blending the form of an experimental artist’s book with the sequentiality of a comic strip. This whimsical yet cogent visual narrative features a scanned-in sugar sculpture as the protagonist who interacts with hand-drawn characters and scenes in an adventure which spans thousands of years of history, mythology and politics.”