The Australian art world’s biggest show has arrived in Ballarat.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The 2015 Archibald Prize collection was officially launched on Thursday night before the doors open on Friday at the Art Gallery of Ballarat.
Among the high-flying portrait subjects was musician Abbe May, who played at the opening.
She said working with artist Angus McDonald on Romanticide had been a light in a dark time.
“It’s a portrait of me in a time when I wasn’t particularly well. I had a lot of….anxiety and depression and stress, and you can see it in my face, it’s quite intense,” she said.
“Rather than it being confronting and and stressful to look at though, it’s actually kind of comforting that Angus wanted to take a picture of me even though I was really not in a good place. It’s a actually a nice thing to remind me that you can come out of some really bad times.”
Ms May’s portait is among the darker works in the collection. The brighter works include that of Ballarat model and activist Ollie Henderson and Juan Ford’s William Buckley-inspired self portrait.
Director of the Art Gallery of Ballarat Gordon Morrison said the arrival of the collection, which he called “the Melbourne Cup of the art world”, had taken 10 years of work.
“I first asked the Art Gallery of New South Wales about 2005 whether they’d consider the show touring here, so it’s nice to see that it’s happened,” he said.
Mr Morrison said the Archies exposed people to art they might not see otherwise, and so was particularly special in that sense.
“Don’t come to it expecting to like everything you see. Part of the Archie experience is that you’re supposed to come in and say ‘how on earth did the selection committee choose that painting?’,” he said.
Ms May said conservative Queensland Federal MP Bob Katter, whose portrait was painted by Kristin Tennyson, had embraced this idea, describing the picture of her (with distaste) as “pornographic”.
Councillor Vicki Coltman, who chairs the gallery board, said she was eager to see the local and visiting newcomers to the gallery who will walk through the doors.
“I’m excited about people that have never been to the Ballarat Art Gallery, and there are people in Ballarat that have never been, coming into the gallery,” she said.