Noice!
It’s not the only painting he’s done of her. There is also this one:
Both paintings seem too kind to me
Looking at who else has been painted, it looks like how loved or unloved they are as cultural figures has very little to do with it.
If it was just the portrait of Gina, I’d say “it’s satire”. But Goodesy is a damn legend who has done a lot to start the hard conversations Australia needs to have about racism; his portrait isn’t much more flattering.
The set as a whole says a lot about Australian cultural figures. I like it very much.
And she absolutely hates being called an “heiress”. She says she thinks she worked her way up from office admin to company owner. I’m not making any of this up.
Earned or inherited? On her father’s fortune Wikipedia suggests “stumbled”:
“Hancock returned to the area many times and, accompanied by prospector Ken McCamey, followed the iron ore over a distance of 112 km (70 mi). He soon came to realise that he had stumbled across reserves of iron ore so vast that they could supply the entire world…”
I remember reading an article about Hancock Prospecting, in the days before Gina decided to be an actual miner. They got very very rich on the basis of leasing claims to mining companies. Given how rich they were, the surprising thing to the journalist who visited the office of Hancock Prospecting was how few employees there were. All they had to do was keep track of which mining company was leasing which claim and keep on top of the invoicing. They were similar to landlords, but with considerably fewer responsibilities.
Since taking over the company, Gina has launched a mine or two. Last I heard, the results were mixed, and I frankly wondered why they bothered.
TBF to her that is a terrible painting…
It is in the eye of the beholder.
I mean, you don’t hear Jesus complaining, do you?
yep, she doesn’t do… subtle
The only one I know is Angus, and I’d wager he thinks his portrait rocks!
The cream of the jest is perhaps the discovery that Australia’s athletic elite have such easily purchased morality,
The first portrait of Rinehart, a watercolour, was revealed on Wednesday, but a second black-and-white portrait in the same exhibition has also become a target according to a letter to the gallery from Swimming Queensland chief Kevin Hasemann.
Chalmers and Hasemann co-ordinated a group of 20 elite Australian athletes to call for the portraits to be removed. In a letter to National Gallery director Nick Mitzevich in April, Hasemann said: “Two portraits of our patron, Mrs Gina Rinehart AO, are of deep concern to us because they are offensive to Mrs Rinehart.”
Yeah, there’s quite a bit of double chin in the portrait, but mostly the lack of flattery is down to style universally applied rather than a personal attack - but since there is quite a lot to attack her for, she should be grateful (and recognize she doesn’t have anything to complain about).
From your description it sounds like under her direction the company has opened a vanity mine or two, but unless she has used an excavator for at least a full work week, I think it’s a stretch to call her a miner. As a kid I was in the cab of my family’s logging trucks quite often and even drove one around the garage lot at my dad’s place, but I’d hardly call myself a trucker!
The astonishing thing about today’s billionaires is how needy they are. It’s not enough to be richer than God: they all want everyone to think they’re wonderful all the time.
I’d be very curious whether it’s “today’s billionaires” or whether the behavior is actually much the same as it ever was. On the one hand I’d assume that we don’t have a long history of wealthy patrons of the arts because of rich people who don’t care about public perception; on the other I could imagine that the increase in the number of filthy rich who lack some other justifying mythology(eg. the sort that hereditary nobility or religious authority figures cultivate) and their exposure to celebrity culture(which isn’t about the poor; but is about people who get more public attention per dollar than those who are primarily noted for being rich).
It’s typically a good idea to get actual facts; absolutely so when you can tell yourself a plausible little story supporting either side; so it would be fascinating to know if anyone has studied the breakdown of attitudes and behavior among the wealthy over time in terms of number who prefer to avoid attention; number who desire the adulation of their peers and those a few notches above or below them and view the attitude of the public as relevant only to the degree it affects the perceptions of those they do care about; and number who do actively desire public acclaim.
That’s the Australian vernacular. A “miner” can be a mining company, someone who works in a mine, or someone who owns a mine.
ETA: Australians often get ambiguous with their definitions. A “hotel” can be a) a place where you rent a room on a daily basis, b) a pub with accommodation on a daily basis, usually upstairs, or c) a pub with no accommodation.
Another example: Americans and British both differentiate their deep-fried potato products: “chips” vs “french fries”, or “crisps” vs “chips”. The Australians call these “chips” and “chips” respectively.
She was Born in 1954, so yeah.
Back in the day “off season training in Australia” was a euphemism for something else. So, nope, not surprised.
