NEVER one to miss an opportunity to make fun (and make a point) of those he sees as benefitting from the public purse, Seaford artist Tony Sowersby has chosen Foreign Minister Julie Bishop as the subject of his entry in this year’s Bald Archy Prize.
Billed as “the art that laughs at art’s lighter side” the Bald Archy Prize “provides artists of all styles and standards with a genuine opportunity, ranging from the hilarious to the bizarrely vulgar, to create portrait paintings of humour, dark satire, light comedy or caricature”.
Sowersby, who regularly wryly comments on public affairs through his art, says his entry is a “reworking of a cartoon that I put out during the latest (but not the last) politicians’ rorts scandal”.
He sees his work depicting Ms Bishop astride a polo horse as a “statement”.
His caption reads: “Hey, I’m working here.”
“Our Foreign Minister Julie Bishop was heavily criticised, in my opinion unfairly, for attending [a previous annual] Portsea polo event at the expense of the taxpayers,” Sowersby says.
“I mean, the Mornington Peninsula is 3500 kilometres from her electorate in Perth, and she was drinking French champagne, and she was wearing German clothes, and the car park was full of European vehicles, and her boyfriend [former Mornington Peninsula pharmacist David Panton] is a Victorian.
“It all sounds like Foreign Affairs to me.”
The Bald Archy Prize is said to be judged by a sulphur-crested cockatoo named Maude and has its basis in the irreverent, larrikin Australian comic comment. This year’s winner of the $10,000 prize will be announced in Sydney in July.
First published in the Mornington News – 7 February 2017
