A wonderful, delicate and indeed, flattering portrait of a successful lady….

I dont see what all the fuss is about.

It’s a wonderful portrait and somehow captures her very soul. The play of light over her captivating eyes is particularly delightful.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz74ed6yk9lo

Streisand effect – Wikipedia

Yeah, imagine being so rich and yet so stupid that you don’t understand art…follow the link on that page and you get a far more interesting and disturbing story about the woman.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-63340414

Is this the artist that does the head tube pictures for Norco?

@desperatebicycle I’ve never witnessed such open unashamed racism as I did when I travelled in Australia (it was 27 years ago). I can only liken it to the film type racism you see portrayed in Mississippi Burning and those sort of films. It was a real shock to me and I’d just been living in Handsworth, Birmingham where racial tension has let to riots only a few years previously but Oz was on another level. I hope its changed.

Some years ago I had the awkward experience of organising the (legislated) public consultation process for one of her company’s large projects. Against my advice they decided that they would make it hard for people to make comment, refusing emails and insisting on written correspondence.

So Greenpeace asked people to email them and then printed everything out and created a news item when they turned up at the offices (which had no form of security) with all the print outs.

It was rather amusing.

It’s not like anyone else gets a bum deal in the rest of his work.

http://inreview.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Vincent-Namatjira-Tarnanthi-Installation-SRGB-2000px-Photo-Saul-Steed-0Z2Y7506.jpg

Imagine being that thin-skinned!

I hope its changed.

I don’t think it’s any different to the UK personally. There’s fairly large pockets of ignorance, but there are also lots of allies dedicated to trying to improve the situation for indigenous people. It’s extremely complex.

I was in a meeting today with a senior executive from NHS Wales today who commented that NZ and Australia are way ahead when it comes to health equity.

The most racist person I’ve come across in 20 years was a Scotsman who claimed he’d moved here to get away from the racial diversity at home.

Are the indigenous aboriginals still casually referred to as Abbo’s, or has that pretty much stopped nowadays?

Serious question, I’m interested as I was last there in 1998, so things will hopefully have improved a lot over that time. Although I don’t think most people were actually racist back then, there was still a lot of casual terms that were accepted in general convo’s.

Are the indigenous aboriginals still casually referred to as Abbo’s, or has that pretty much stopped nowadays?

Absolutely not out loud in any places I’ve ever been.

Where I work even referring to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as ATSI is frowned upon as being reduced to an abbreviation is offensive.

I remember the attitude to “transvestites” in England around that time, so I think everyone has moved on.

I remember the attitude to “transvestites” in England around that time, so I think everyone has moved on.

Not so sure about that but I’m glad the Aussies have moved on! There always seemed to be a weird juxstaposition with Aussies yelling about how cosmopolitan they were/are and the casual racism.

Hopefully they’re leading the way, other western countries like the US seem to be going backwards..

Yeah, imagine being so rich and yet so stupid that you don’t understand art…

It must be weird being so rich that everyone worships the ground you walk on and generally filters the negative crap away from you.   The swimmers all declaring that shes a wonderful woman and does so much for the sport is weird.  Philanthropy can obviously make the odious seem appealing.

I was there between 89 and 92, the open racism toward any non white non Australians was truly awful, the racism toward the aboriginal people was absolutely shocking and abbo was not the usual word used by many, I’m sure some will know the word I mean.

Spent months up in the Kimberley and the Northern Territory, the worst thing by far was that some of the hotels (pubs) had segregated bars, not officially but they would have two bars and aboriginal folk weren’t allowed to go in to the nicer bar, if they did they’d be asked to leave, I saw this happen and the person was told “Your bar is next door.”

I imagine things have changed greatly since then, I certainly hope they have.

Thought it was quite flattering considering what it could have been.

The Cedar & Pine bar post is a wonderful piece of work!

I’ve seen the painting and photo before, but I hadn’t got around to actually reading what the issue was – seems I now know all I need to know about the woman.

I remember the attitude to “transvestites” in England around that time, so I think everyone has moved on.

Have you read what JK Rowling says about anyone who isn’t cishet? Repulsive individual, and she’s not alone, she’s got friends like Lawrence Fox, for example.

Have you read what JK Rowling says about anyone who isn’t cishet? Repulsive individual, and she’s not alone, she’s got friends like Lawrence Fox, for example.

Yeah, there’s pockets … some of them very large pockets, dickheads will always be dickheads etc. I meant more the general societal change. Or is that just our increasingly silo’ed experience?

Aha, that would be what some folk mean by ‘facism’.