Barbara Campbell
Fresh Glories
00:07:02 1997
Two sets of “portraits” were created over the eight day sitting period of Australia’s House of Representatives. During the televised Parliamentary question time each day, a dinner plate was inked up with lipstick and wiped back to reveal the makers’ marks of the long line of Colonial portrait artists who sought to capture the likeness of Trukanini, the so-called “last Tasmanian Aborigine”. Following this, Campbell created a portrait of an Australian Parliamentarian, using a freezed frame from the freshly recorded broadcast, inking up the engraved plastic plate with masticated black jellybeans and wiping it clean.
National Portrait Gallery, Old Parliament House, Canberra (1997).
DVD available.