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April 12th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda When self-taught artist Allie Campbell asked a Katoomba hospital to sell her some spare bedpans, the request raised a few eyebrows.
But when staff learned she was planning to use them to frame portraits of Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, they let her have them for free.
The resulting works – A Fitting Frame No. 1 and A Fitting Frame No. 2 – have earned Campbell the art world’s most proudly un-prestigious prize, the Bald Archy.
The bedpan portraits beat 40 other finalists to claim the $7500 prize, which was judged solely by a sulphur-crested cockatoo named Maude.
“As Maude said, ‘I’ll go for the deadheads in the bedpans,'” competition founder Peter Batey said at a ceremony in Sydney on Thursday.
Mr Batey told reporters the Bald Archy Awards celebrated “irreverence, larrikinism, outrageousness, fearlessness and true comedy”.
Maude was unable to attend the ceremony as she “was not flying in protest of Qantas”, he said.
However, she sent her best wishes and a token – a single yellow and white feather.
This is the first time the Bald Archy prize has been awarded to two portraits.
Campbell, 66, a retired aged-care worker, told AAP she had one spare bedpan at home and was still deciding whose portrait it should frame.
“I would like to get the whole cabinet in, but they’re changing so frequently – either getting kicked out or leaving in disgrace – that it is hard to keep track,” she said.
She thinks the Australian public has become disillusioned about politicians.
“They all start off with good ideas, and somewhere along the line it gets lost in the political infighting,” she said.
Caricatures of media doyenne Ita Buttrose, federal MP Bob Katter and cricket legend-cum Liz Hurley handbag Shane Warne were also among the finalists.
The competition parodies the NSW Art Gallery’s Archibald Prize for portraiture.
Campbell had never entered an art competition before, but with the Bald Archy success under her belt she aims to try for the main prize in 2013.
“I’ll have a crack at it next year,” she said.
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