Past Shows
The Many Faces of Gina
August 2024, Goodspace Gallery
We all know who Gina Rinehart is. Her love for coal and coins makes Hoggish Greedly (perhaps the greatest Captain Planet villain) look like a socialist eco-warrior. Coming in hot as number one on the list of Australia's richest people, she has a net worth of $31.3 billion. She swindled her children out of their inheritance of stolen money in an elaborate scheme. She believes climate change is propaganda peddled by extremist environmentalists. She thinks Margaret Thatcher is an inspirational figure. She's using her hoarded wealth to host multiple lavish dinners at $14,000 a head with "no strings attached" for Peter Dutton. She's been caught schmoozing with Donald Trump at his 2024 presidential campaign. In her eyes, this is all fine. Her recent portrait by Vincent Namatijra, however, is apparently where she draws the moral line. Artists everywhere are baffled by this adult tantrum. Why is this billionaire, who seems completely unfazed by criticisms of her grotesque fortune, unethical business model, and rampant environmental destruction, so perturbed by an artist’s representation of her? Namatijra’s (brilliant) portrait begins to show what lies beneath her fleshy face, but does not really shine a light on the festering putrescence that is her soul, her core. We clearly need to finish what Namatjira started. As such, the art collective Poor People is curating an exhibition dedicated to Gina & the parasitic worm that pilots her skin suit. If she's upset by one artist’s depiction of her face, we hope multiple depictions of her soul will make her head explode.
View the Works Below
SCUMSUCKER (LARD ENCASED) NOT TO SCALE
Tess Tickle, 2024
@poorpeopleco
Preserved clam worm, 2L beef fat, isopropyl alcohol, distilled water, silicone, epoxy, glass, cotton wicks.
When I thought about the type of person that is able to sleep happily at night knowing that their inherited riches are founded on sapping the resources of stolen land, as well as using that hoarded wealth to donate to far-right white nationalists (like Donald Trump and Pauline Hanson of One Nation), I immediately thought of an evil worm that pilots a mech suit made of skin to appear human. And that is the type of person Gina Rinehart apparently is.
So here she is in all her glory - a preserved worm encased by 2L of molten fat.
PROLARPS PROFESSIONAL LAPSE
@we_are_pipe, 2024
Mixed business.
EAT THE RICH, SPECIFICALLY THIS BITCH.
Kel Christiansen, 2024
Pen and ink on paper.
THE PHILANTHROPIST
Betty Swallows, 2024
Collage
“Ms Rinehart topped the Australian financial review list as the richest person in Australia for the fifth year in a row, with the publication listing her wealth at $40.61 billion.”
- Victor Petrovic and Emmy Groves (ABC News)
“Donald Trump shows us the way to succeed.”
- Gina Rinehart
THE MINERS QUEEN
Betty Swallows, 2024
Collage
“The council chairman has received a complaint from Gina Rinehart regarding her depiction in two works by Namatjira,” he wrote. “Subsequent to Mrs Rinehart’s complaint to the chairman, we have received two further complaints from people who appear to be employees (or former employees) of Hancock Prospecting. I have also received a call from a former NCI chair to advise Ms Rinehart is rallying her friends to send complaints, demanding the works be removed from display.”
Several complainants strongly praised Rinehart as “one of the most influential and important people in Australia”, an “Australian icon”, and “a role model for aspiring female entrepreneurs”. Some asked the portrait be taken down and “redone immediately”, or for the gallery to “issue a formal written apology”.
- Josh Butler (The Guardian)
HIGHBRED PRINCESS
Betty Swallows, 2024
Collage
“Mining in Australia occupies less than one-fifth of one per cent of the total surface of our continent and yet it supports 14 million people. Nothing should be sacred from mining whether it’s your ground, my ground, the Blackfellas ground or anybody else's. So the question of Aboriginal land rights and things of this nature shouldn’t exist.”
[Aboriginal people] that have been assimilated into, you know, earning good living orearning wages amongst the civilised areas, those that have been accepted into society and they have accepted society and can handle society, I’d leave them well alone…
“The ones that are no good to themselves and can’t accept things, the half-castes -and this is where most of the trouble comes - I would dope the water up so that they were sterile and would breed themselves out in future and that would solve the problem.”
- Quotes from Lang Hancock (Gina Rinehart’s father)
CLOSED INHERITANCE
Betty Swallows, 2024
Collage
“… destructive display of greed, jealousy and a selfish sense of entitlement… “
- Ginia Rinehart (Gina’s daughter) in response to her mother changing the deed to Lang Hancock’s billion-dollar inheritance without her children’s knowledge.
“… before it gets really out of hand, I would try to get it back in house and out of public view…”
⁃ Barnaby Joyce’s private email to Gina Rinehart, regarding the inheritance lawsuits.
“This lawyer stuff will never work and all that will result is one massive tax, leaving you in bankruptcy.”
⁃ Gina Rinehart’s response to her children fighting for their inheritance in court.
BILLION DOLLAR OMELETTE
Maddy Furness, 2024
Performance piece (egging)