Friday Five: Value Portraits

A few weeks ago I organised a workshop in Canberra for my work team. As part of a session about our organisation's values (respect, integrity, collaboration, excellence and innovation), I took them to the National Portrait Gallery, where we all chose an artwork of a person who we felt represented those values, and shared our findings with the group. These are the results:

Adam (Adam Goodes), 2014 by Alan Jones

Adnyamathanha/ Nurangga man Adam Goodes (b. 1980) is a former champion AFL footballer who played 396 games with the Sydney Swans. Recognised as one of Australia's great footballers, he is a dual Brownlow medalist, a four-time all-Australian, and a member of the Indigenous Team of the Century. With his cousin and fellow Swans star, Michael O'Loughlin, Goodes established the GO Foundation in 2009 to provide educational opportunities and mentoring for the next Indigenous generation. Awarded Australian of the Year in 2014, he has challenged endemic racism both on and off the field. After his early retirement in 2015 following repeated on-field heckling and a lack of support from the AFL, he co-founded the Indigenous Defence and Infrastructure Consortium, which helps First Nation businesses work in long-term building projects.

Goodes' pride in his cultural heritage and the dignity on his stand against racism inspired Alan Jones, a self-confessed Swans supporter, to paint this dual portrait for the Archibald Prize in 2014. "I have enormous respect for the strength and integrity he shows both on and off the field. Adam is an amazing athlete but also so much more than that; he is a son, a brother, an extremely proud Indigenous Australian... and a great role model in so many ways."

Dr Joan M Redshaw by Barbara Tribe 

Joan Redshaw AM (1921-1944), medical practitioner, graduated from the University of Sydney in 1944 before travelling to London to complete post-graduate studies in paediatrics at the Great Ormond Street Hospital. Returning to Australia in 1948, she became the first woman ship's surgeon to be employed by the Orient Line, famously performing an appendectomy on the Red Sea. On board, she met Captain Arthur Strong, whom she married in 1949. For twenty years from 1951, Redshaw was a paediatrician and general practitioner in Nabiac, on the mid-north coast of New South Wales. A member of the Women's Advisory Board to the NSW premier, she spent twelve years on the council of the Medical Association. As president of the International Women's Association, she campaigned against child marriage and female circumcision; her local community involvements included crisis accommodation for women affected by domestic violence, and alcoholic programs.

Barbara Tribe was a significant sculptor and the first woman to win the New South Wales Travelling Art Scholarship. She spent most of her career in England, exhibiting with the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of British Sculptors.

Quentin Bryce (2016) by Michael Zavros

The Hon. Dame Quentin Bryce AD CVO (b. 1942), academic, lawyer and human rights advocate, was the first woman to be appointed governor-general of Australia. Born in Brisbane, she spent her early childhood in Ilfracombe in central western Queensland. She attained degrees in arts and law at the University of Queensland, where in 1968 she became the first female member of the law faculty. By the time she retired from teaching in 1983, she was increasingly involved in human rights and advocacy work. Between 1984 and 1993 she was director of the Queensland Women's Information Service, director of Queensland's Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and the Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner. In 1997 she became principal and chief executive officer of the Women's College within the University of Sydney. Six years later she became governor of Queensland. In 2008 she was appointed Australia's 25th governor-general, and served in this role until March 2014.

Michael Zavros commenced work on this portrait in 2015, when Bryce became chair of Queensland's Special Taskforce on Domestic and Family Violence. Zavros included the proteas as the emblem of the Taskforce, but also to signify the sitter's strength and wisdom, and the dignity of her longstanding commitment to justice and human rights.

Professor Penny Sackett, astronomer and physicist (2011) by Andrew Mezei

Penny Sackett (b. 1956), physicist, astronomer and former Chief Scientist for Australia, gained her PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2002 she was appointed director of the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University. Responsible for the Mount Stromlo Observatory, she had to endure its destruction by bushfires in January 2003, and negotiations for the insurance payout and rebuilding of the heritage-listed facility. Sackett was one of an international team of 73 astronomers who discovered the first known earth-sized planet orbiting a normal star other than the Sun in the inner Milky Way in 2006. Appointed the Chief Scientist for Australia in late 2008, Sackett remained an adjunct professor at ANU and continued to supervise research students. She resigned as Chief Scientist in 2011, announcing that she intended to contribute to science in other ways.

Entering this portrait in the Archibald Prize for 2011, Andrew Mezei said that he aspired to paint Sackett after hearing her speak on the radio. He wrote: 'She responded to scepticism about climate change with eloquent reasoning … I wanted to show her femininity as perfectly compatible with her impeccable focus on facts.' The setting is imagined, though informed by various images of Mount Stromlo Observatory.

Lowitja O'Donoghue (2006) by Robert Hannaford AM

Lowitja O'Donoghue AC CBE (b. 1932), Indigenous rights campaigner, is a Yankunjatjara woman. Removed from her mother at the age of two, she was raised in a mission home and worked as a nurse before joining the Department of Aboriginal Affairs in 1967. By 1975, she was its regional director in South Australia. She was Foundation Chair of the National Aboriginal Conference in 1977 and chaired the Aboriginal Development Commission from 1989 to 1990. O'Donoghue was Australian of the Year in 1984, when she became the first Aboriginal person to address the General Assembly of the United Nations. While Chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission between 1990 and 1996, she helped to draft the Mabo legislation. Currently she is Patron of Reconciliation South Australia and of the Lowitja Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health.

Robert Hannaford said of O'Donoghue that he observed a 'vast understanding and sympathy in her face, a sadness', but also thought she looked 'fantastic in that light I've got in that studio'. The pair became friends during the many hours of sittings involved in creating the work.

Friday Five: Stitching and Bitching

Here are another five of my latest cross-stitch creations. The first two patterns and explanations are taken from Really Cross Stitch; for when You Just Want to Stab Something a Lot by Rayna Fahey.

No borders unless they're pretty and floral

"This pattern is dedicated to people fleeing persecution who, despite all obstacles still strive to create a clean, tidy, safe space for their loved ones to rest before facing another day.

The women who sew together rags for their wee ones 'cause they know how important it is for a two-year-old to have a cuddly friend. The women who dress in black and march for peace amid gunfire and tear gas. All the while carrying giant handbags with keys and snacks and hankies for small runny noses."

C'mon gang: Be excellent to each other

"Stop for a moment and imagine what the world would be like if everyone did one simple act of kindness for a stranger, every single day.

"Old ladies would get safely across roads, lost wallets would be returned to their owners, wars would stop breaking out all over the place. the possibilities are truly endless. Pay it forward people, I think we're onto something here!

"Fucking kindness. It just works every time."

The remaining images are little kits by Thomas Joseph that I picked up back in the UK, where we like cheap gags and sheep. Well, wouldn't ewe?

Freedom at what price?

Earlier this week we received the good news that Nobel Peace Laureat Aung San Suu Kyi was released from the house arrest under which she has spent 15 of the past 21 years. This is not the end, however. The country in which she lives is ruled by a military junta which flagrantly breaks the Geneva Convention and routinely lists killings, torture, rape, destruction and appropriation of property, and taking of hostages among its violation of human rights and crimes against humanity.

Aung San Suu Kyi has much Western backing, and support for her has become symbolic with the struggle to protect democracy and freedom of the individual. She has been released before. In 1995 she was released only to be attacked and there are fears that a similar thing could happen again. She may be out of 'custody' but as long as she speaks out against the abuse of human rights she is not safe. She also argues that she is not free.

"If my people are not free, how can you say I am free? We are none of us free."

Immediately Aung San Suu Kyi wants to work to free the more than 2,100 political prisoners still being held by the Burmese regime. Her intention is to gain global support and bring their plight to interantional attention. "This is a time for Burma when we need help. We need everybody to help in this venture. Western nations, eastern nations, all nations."

She displays an exemplary love of her country despite the treatment she has received and says of her captors, "I think we will have to sort out our differences across the table, talking to each other, agreeing to disagree, or finding out why we disagree and trying to remove the sources of our disagreement." We can only wish that others around the world were more rational and less bent on revenge.

In a speech of which a trade unionist would be proud, she said, "There is a time to be quiet and a time to talk. People must work in unison. Only then can we achieve our goal." Crucially this assumes that we all have the same goal. Unfortunately while some seek personal advancement at all costs, and inevitably the expenxse of others, this can never be the case.