The Archibald Prize for portrait painting - 100 years and still going strong

2021 Winner: Guy Warren at 100 painted by Peter Wegner

The perennial public favourite in the visual arts, the Archibald Prize for portrait painting has opened at the Art Gallery Of NSW with the prize itself reaching its 100 year milestone. This year some 52 paintings were selected as finalists from the 938 entries. The 'Árchies' as they are affectionately known, are always perceived as a bit of entertainment as much from seeing which artists are selected to be exhibited as to whom they chose to be the sitters and subjects of their work.

The somewhat sentimental winner is a portrait by Peter Wegner of Guy Warren who turned 100 this year in a coincidental symmetry with the anniversary of the prize. Warren won the 1985 Archibald prize for his portrait of artist/sculptor Bert Flugelman and has been featured seven times in the Archibald exhibition.

This year there are a number of first time finalists as well as many established names such as Kate Beynon, Natasha Bieniek, Jun Chen, Lucy Culliton, Tsering Hannaford, Richard Lewer, Fiona Lowry, Mathew Lynn, Euan Macleod, Thom Roberts, William Mackinnon and Nick Stathopoulos.

The subjects chosen are varied with portraits of artists such as Gareth Sansom, Joe Furlonger and Del Kathryn Barton; art dealers and collectors such as Stuart Purves and Liz Laverty and a smattering of public figures such as COVID public health professional, Professor Raina Macintyre, NSW Governor Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC QC, journalist Kerrie O'Brien, Australian of the Year Grace Tame, actor Rachel Griffiths to name a few. Portraits of politicians are largely absent.

Along with the Archibald Prize there is also the Wynne Prize for landscape painting or figurative sculpture. This year the finalists include a strong presence of indigenous artists reflecting their increasing engagement for this prize in particular, which resonates with their connection to the Australian landscape.  This year's entries maintain their use of large canvasses with vivid colours capturing either a mix of myths from country or direct representation of fauna or features of the land.

The Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prize exhibitions run from 5 June to 26 September 2021 at the Art Gallery of NSW

Chocolate - a short history

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Chocolate, a vice for some, a special treat for others. Described by Swedish botanist, Carolus Linnaeus as the "food of the Gods" (Linneaus gave the cacao tree its  formal botanical name 'Theobroma Cacao'), chocolate has travelled across the world in many forms since the 16th Century. A short history is summarised -

• In 1502 Columbus returned to Spain from the Americas with the cocoa bean. Unfortunately Ferdinand of Spain was unimpressed (and Columbus had been something of a nuisance to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain in any case so there was even less interest)

• Years later in 1517 Conquistador Hernan Cortes and his expedition come into contact with the cocoa bean with the Aztecs and their Emperor, Montezuma. Cortes establishes cocoa bean crops in Spanish territories in Africa and the West Indies with the bean arriving in Austria and Italy.

• Anne of Austria and Louis XIII of France are married in 1615 and Anne brings her love of chocolate to France.

• Chocolate drinking is promoted  in London through public advertisements in 1657 with special Chocolate Houses becoming preferred places instead of the then popular Tea Houses. Chocolate continues to gain popularity throughout Europe.

• In England, Dr Joseph Fry establishes the first large-scale manufacturing enterprise using steam engines that grind beans in 1795. The Industrial Revolution enables larger production volumes to be achieved.   

• C J Van Houten in Amsterdam in 1828 discovers how to extract cocoa butter from the cocoa bean producing a smooth dry powder. He also invents a machine which chemically adjusts the natural acid of the bean through alkalines.

• The 1870s see Daniel Peter of Nestle creating milk chocolate bu adding condensed milk into the production process. Randolph Lindt develops a process of heating chocolate dough and then using rolling through the chocolate creating a liquid form still in use today.

Chocolate has been with us for over 500 years with a world-wide following crossing borders and cultures.

Sydney's temperatures and increased heat from climate change

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Extreme weather events have focussed attention on the effect of temperature in large urban centres. None more so than for cities that have large built-up precincts and are subject to urban overheating.

Urban overheating can be caused by multiple factors including building materials (which absorb rather than diffuse solar radiation), human activity and air pollution, dense closed-in areas with little vegetation and few open areas to name a few.  

Research from the University of NSW has found that the mean daily maximum temperature was between 8 and 10.5 degrees Celsius hotter in Western Sydney than the Central Business District (CBD) of the city. Western Sydney was measured as being 20 to 50 kilometres inland.

For the inner suburbs of Sydney, located 8 to 12 kilometres inland from the CBD, the temperature variation was 5 to 6.5 degrees Celsius.  

One reason that has been proposed for this significant heat variation is the proximity of the Sydney CBD to the ocean with coastal breezes cooling the  inner city but unable to penetrate further inland.

Global warming - the other Greenhouse gases

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Most of the public discussion and policy focus is rightly concentrated on carbon dioxide emissions however sight should not be lost on the other Greenhouse Gases (GHG) that are also being emitted in smaller quantities and which do pack a sizeable environmental punch.

ANZAC Day - 25 April 2021

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ANZAC Day and the sacrifice of the servicemen and women in time of war and conflict becomes momentarily, centre-stage. According to the Australian War Memorial, a total of 102,911 Australians have lost their lives as a result of service with Australian units since 1885. The range of wars, police actions, regional conflicts and disaster recovery is diverse in scale and duration as demonstrated below. The dates of the conflicts and actions are adjusted as many service personal died later as a result of their injuries or as a result of post war reconstruction activities such as occupation forces or mine and ordinance clearance.

Conflict	Dates	Mortalities
Sudan	1885	9
South Africa	1899-1902	589
China	1900-1901	6
First World War	1914-1921	61,605
Second World War	1939-1947	39,654
Australia: bomb removal Japan – Occupation force	1947-1950 1947-1952	4 3
Papua and New Guinea	1947-1975	13
Middle East (UNSTO)	1948	1
Berlin Airlift	1948-1949	1
Malayan Emergency	1948-1960	39
Kashmir – UN observer	1948-1985	1
Korean War	1950-1953	340
Malta	1952-1955	3
Korean War – Armistice	1953-1957	16
Southeast Asia (SEATO)	1955-1975	10
Indonesian Confrontation	1962-1966	22
Malayan Peninsula	1964-1966	2
Vietnam War	1962-1975	521
Thailand	1965-1968	2
Irian Jaya	1976-1981	1
Western Sahara (MINURSO)	1991-1994	1
Somalia	1992-1994	1
Bougainville	1997-2003	1
East Timor	1997-2003	4
Afghanistan	2001 - present	43
Iraq	2003-2013	4
Solomon Island (RAMSI)	2003-2013	1
Indonesia (Sumatra Assist)	2005	9
Fiji	2006	2

Lest we forget

Climate change - the challenge of not exceeding a 1.5 degree Celsius increase

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Global management consulting firm, McKinsey & Co, has provided a simple summary of the impact of a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase in temperature and the solutions to prevent crossing this critical threshold. These can be listed as -

Impacts

• weather events become more extreme and frequent. These include wildfires, hurricanes, severe storms, drought, flooding and very high temperatures.
• climate feedbacks occur such that climate change triggers changes on the planet which lead to further changes in the climate and an ongoing cycle occurs becoming self-reinforcing. The higher the temperature, the greater the effect.
• climate feedback include higher temperatures contributing to the loss of forests which in turn lead to the loss of carbon capture, increased carbon release and correspnding higher climate change levels.
• loss of ice cover warms the Earth with less reflective cover from the sun and hence contributes to further temperature increase.
• the current situation where climate change can already been felt is the result of an increase of 1.1 degrees Celsius.

Solutions

• 75% of emissions of CO2 relate to energy production and use so this is a primary focus.
• power companies have been moving away from traditional coal and gas burning and moving to renewables such as solar and wind power. Clean hydrogen or green hydrogen is the new growth opportunity.
• Carbon capture and storage is essential to get CO2 out of the atmosphere. This is best achieved through reforestation since plants absorb carbon. However each year an area the size of Greece is being deforested. McKinsey & Co believe that by 2030, reforestation would need to be the size of Turkey.
• food production is a major source of the greenhouse gas, methane. Cows are the major source of methane although rice production also contributes to this gas. All the cows on the planet currently generate emissions "roughtly on a par with the United States". This can be addressed though various measure such as less beef consumption, changes to certain breeding and genetic selection, methane inhibitors, feed-mix additive changes.
• road transport accounts for around 15 per cent of CO2 with electrification of vehicles seen as a viable solution using green generation source and battery storage being the pathway aways from emissions.
• heating (such as space and water heating associated with buildings) accounts for 5 to 8 per cent of global emissions. The solution is adaption to using green energy sources for power.
• increased efficiency in production and process optimisation in heavy indsutry is a critical related step. Recycling of steel has been identified as a key influence on reducing emissions.

While various initiatives have been taken to commence applying many of these solutions, including most notably in the private sector, concerted support from National Governments is still needed worldwide in order to effect the transition in multiple industries. To do less will lead to unthinkable failure.

Plastic not so fantastic - failures in recycling a primary contaminant

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After decades of seeking mainstream public attention, the dangers of plastic contamination in the environment has finally become accepted across international borders. Alas, this recognition has only occured now that the problem has reached a critical scale and impact across the world's oceans and reached as far away as Antarctica and the Northern polar region. 

How much plastic is leaking into the ocean ? Estimates are still being calculated however the quantity ranges from 4.8 to 12.7 mega tonnes per year. This is a staggering amount of which 80% of plastics in the ocean originate from land-based sources. 

Plastic is not a single type of manufactured artificial substance but comes in multiple forms. Control, reduction of use and recycling has become a critical issue in the world's environment and continuing failures have led widespread plastic contamination across the world. Ocean litter is commonly found to comprise cigarette butts, food wrappers, bottle tops, plastic bags and straws hence the current moves to ban many of these plastic items.

What are the categories of plastic that are eligible for recycling ? 

1. at the top of the list is is polythylene terephthalate (commonly referred to as PET) comprises roughly more than half of the the recyclable plastics. It is denoted on packaging with the no "1"
2. the second most common form is high-density polyethylene (or HDPE) that is denoted by the no "2" on packaging. HDPE comprises a bit over a third of the recycling market and typically is used for packaging (milk and shampoo bottles) and pipes.
3. next is low density polyethylene which has a "4"on its packaging and is used in clear plastic film. This plastic accounts for around 4% of the recycling market 
4. also with around 4% of the market is polyproplene which is denoted by the number "5". This plastic is used in yoghurt and food spread containers.

The final group of plastic types have little value in manufacturing and thus no recycling. These are polyvinyl chloride (no "3"), polystyrene (no "6"), other mixed plastics (no "7").

The top exporters of plastic waste in 2019 were the European Union, Japan and the United States with the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Mexico and Australia being next. The importers of plastic waste comprise predominantly Malaysia, Hong Kong (interestingly), Turkey, the US, Vietnam, Indonesia, Korea, India, Thailand and now much less significantly, China.

The UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures has tracked the movement of plastic waste as shown in the diagram below -

Environmentally responsible trade in waste plastics in the Asia Pacific Region - UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures

The leakage of waste plastic has a variety of reasons - the difficulty in disposal of residual, unrecyclable plastic, no environmental control in processing plastics, poor management of stockpiling and transport of waste plastic, poor quality of bales being exported, labelling of shipments which is false or incorrect, trading at low or negative prices. Waste leakage most often occurs at the destination country rather than the country of origin or during transit according to UTS.

So what are the solutions ?

In a nutshell, there are improvements that can be implemented such as -

• for exporting countries, improving their collection and sorting of plastics before despatching offshore
• improving the accountability for shipments for both exporters and importers
• checking destination processing and monitoring at the importing countries
• redesign and re-engineering of packaging design and using fewer low value or composite plastics.

The full report can be accessed here: Environmentally responsible trade waste plastics asia pacific