Controversial.

On Friday afternoon I had a twenty four hour leave pass to head north, rendezvous with old friends and go to the Glover Prize exhibition opening at Evandale.

Before I went though, I did a full day of duty - heading to the pool to see Felix receive these at his swimming carnival:

I didn't shirk any of my housewifely duties and went from chore to chore before I left making sure that all of the washing was hung out, the garden was watered and there was a home cooked meal ready to be reheated so that I could socialise, look at pictures and drink bubbly with a clear conscience.

I arrived at my mum's house in Launceston just in time to throw on this:

In keeping with my current fetish for animalia - the skirt is layers of ostrich feathers although it's hard to see. How did we exist living in the shopping wasteland that is Hobart without Net-A-Porter or The Outnet? Earlier in the day, Toby had suggested that I should wear my wedding dress. Last time I took his fashion advice was in the change room at Myer when I can home with a leopard print bikini rather than the more subdued black one that I was leaning towards.

There was a queue to get into the exhibition:

And once inside it was very crowded:

In case you have somehow missed the surge of publicity the winning painting has generated, this is Rodney Pople's work of Port Arthur which took out the prize:

It's a tad difficult to see Martin Bryant holding the shotgun from this angle. Yet, he's been painted in, centre stage, in this hauntingly gloomy, nightmarish scene. Port Arthur has been the scene of crimes against humanity ever since European settlement in Tasmania - with the annihilation of the Tasmanian Aborigines, the depravity of the penal settlement and the more recent horror of Martin Bryant's massacre. Port Arthur is an emotionally disturbing place. This painting really captures that. And yet, until the opening of MONA, Port Arthur has been Tasmania's most visited tourist attraction. 

My friend Brigita from the Tasmanian School of Art  was one of the judges. She said that each of the three judges had a list. This was the only work that each of their lists had in common. 

R