looking and being watched ...

Shane Wombat with his brushes

G'day Petals,

Mrs Wombat and I waddled along to the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery to have a gander at some of the finalists for the Archibald prize t’other day.

Probably the most important portrait prize in Australia for its prestige and with its $100,000.00 winner’s prize the Archibald attracts hundreds of entries from most of the country’s best painters.

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Following are some of the works that attracted me.

 Adam Alcorn’s portrait of Alice Fraser is beautifully handled. It’s fine delineation of the eyes and face gradually soften backward in an almost conical fashion leaving the whole suspended in space. It has a quiet authority that commends you study it.

Alice Fraser- Adam Alcorn

Both Wei Bin Chen and Matthew Kentmann show deft paint handling in their works.  M K’s making me think of Goya and Bacon and Wei’s, Fragonard, and as he notes, Lucien Freud, as both artists with authority, explain the subject.

Self-Portrait No 6- Wei Bin Chen

Nigel Milsom, Sunday 3 may 2015- Matthew Kentmann

Prudence Flint’s “Baby”, I nearly ignored because of its seemingly simplistic Brack-like graphic qualities but was rewarded with further looking. The intensity of the gaze of “the mother” to the “baby” and back has a really odd effect in tending to isolate each in its own sphere. Flint was influenced by C14th paintings of the Madonna and Child where you do see this separateness in the subjects due to the attention to detail offered in these works. In its coolness and structured space this is a very potent work with “baby” looking at its “mother” in an unnervingly omnipotent manner. Ghirlandaio meets Fra Angelico

Baby- Prudence Flint

“El cabeceo” too, has Marcus Wills paraphrasing earlier art forms of the likes of Jan van Eyck and Hans Memling and folding religious triptychs. As a commission to celebrate the subject’s marriage the minutely drawn detail and wit make this work a delight to look at and the reverse wings with both subjects nude, one frontal the other from the rear makes you wonder which feast day is the “Icon” opened or is it for guests to venerate? 

El cabeceo- Marcus Wills

More good fun is being had both metaphorically and in actuality in Leslie Price’s “Hill End bacchanal.”   Painted tonally deep on black velvet as a homage to kitsch and as a passing look at Poussin and Caravaggio via Donald Friend and celebrating his subject, painter Luke Sciberras’ penchant for copious wine laden revelry, this is a hoot of a classical folly in the Australian bush .... Peacocks, pulchritudinous attendants and all.

Hill End bacchanal,(portrait of Luke Sciberras- Leslie Price

A bravura Kandinsky-like portrait in a single session is “Laurie” by Tanja Karl. The intensity of the moment is well shown as is the movement wanted by Tony Curran’s depiction of Luke.

Laurie- Tanja Karl

Luke - Tony Curran

And The Winner of “The Archibald”, Nigel Milsom’s  “Judo House pt6 (the white bird)” an intense, forensically faceted realisation of  barrister friend Charles who is there but not, is analysing but looking somewhere else…a riveting painterly work which hits the right note of presenting the subject not the painter.

Judo House pt 6 (the white bird) - Nigel Milsom

A good show …of much Australian talent….

BFAG

The Crow, Ballarat

We then crossed the road for lunch at The George Laneway to be watched by a big Crow who was intent on taking our food if we left it unattended.

Wombat Droppings

the chronicle of a once egalitarian nation’s inexorable slide into fascism.

Willy Shortstuff, Laboring to be leader of a relevant alternative political party is now attempting to alienate the 14% who support him by lowering the voting age so kindergarten children will be eligible to vote.

He squawked this information to a deathly silence, as people contemplated Rabid-the-Hun’s latest epistle from London. Rabid was addressing a gathering of social misfits of the “Iron Lady” cabal where he said that although Jesus’ notion  “love one another” was fine in principle it just wasn’t practical and was really not relevant in contemporary Capitalist society. Although warmly applauded by those who understood this re-writing of now defunct Xtian philosophy, he was also castigated for his use of the word “society” as the “Iron lady” had proved long ago that this didn’t exist.

Closer to home, Shylock Frydenberg has been arguing the case that selling coal to India is our greatest moral responsibility. Unfortunately his arguments are not only just as attractive, but as thin as the hair on his head. He denied that having taxpayers subsidize an Indian company to pollute the Great Barrier Reef and destroy farmland was not in our national interest.

His Great Leader, Malcon Turnbullfop then popped up in this conversation to say we had a very bright future with Nuclear energy. His newly minted Chief Scientist, Rontgen Funk declared it a very clean energy not at all like the type seen at Three Mile Island, Fukushima and Chernobyl.

“Shylock” with “Horse-Shite” Coorman have also been spruiking the benefits of turning Industry Superannuation Funds over to the banking sector. That these outperform all other “super” funds with none of the scandals and associated investor losses that the banks do so well at, is the very reason the playing field needs levelling. As “Horse-Shite” intoned, wreathed in cigar smoke, “We are the Liarbril Party, the lowest common denominator is our philosophic benchmark.”  They both denied that this exercise was another way of stopping Union funds from being distributed democratically.

Torn Posters, Police Lane Ballarat.

Senator, Simon “No-It’s-Your-Shout” Birmingham understands level playing fields too, and is trying to level public education... totally!  “By adopting the American style of education, we will forge greater cultural ties, allow everyone to fail and it will be cheaper for business executives; although parents will also have to foot the bill for the armed guards that come with this system.” he is alleged to have said.

There really need to be an enquiry into what’s in the water in South Aussie, as “No-It’s-Your-Shout” seems as infected with similar incipient educational ideas like his predecessor Chwissie “The-Whyne-and-Perfect-Prat-of-a-Prefect”, Pyne.

Concentration Camp “Leaners” on Nauru and Manus Islands are being offered the chance to re-locate to the Central Asian Republic of Kyrgyzstan.

Anti-Immigration Minister (also incompetent and sacked Health Minister) “Dodo” Dutton declined to comment as it was a  “Look-Over-There” matter but did wink when it was suggested that, A/ they weren’t likely to drown in Kyrgyzstan, B/ It could be cheaper than the $40,000,000.00 for four Concentration Camp Leaner to go to Cambodia and, C/ he got the idea from his hero, Adolph Schikelgruber’s 1940 one of relocating Germany’s Jewish population of “Leaners” to Madagascar.

Senator “Vichy” Abetz was apparently very excited by the concept saying that Great Uncle Otto did something similar in France in the 40’s too.

Dodo has also announced that charities looking after the welfare of child “Concentration Camp Leaners” will have to pay a fee of $2,000,000.00 which will be non-refundable if they have been found guilty of telling the truth about Ruling Rabble policy. “Truth is relative, “ he is thought to have muttered as he was led away by his black-shirted personal bodyguard, Obersturmbannfuhrer Roaming Quisling of the Border Farce.

The basics of all the above are true… only the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

Hoo-roo Possums,

Shane

Chopper searching... second this week....