Bald Archy prize still thumbing its nose at the art snobs

Eighty-four-year-old Batey's dramas started after he returned home to Coolac, a village in the Riverina north of Gundagai, after a weekend away. It was stinking hot and he decided to "strip off and water the pot plants".

He collapsed and was found 26 hours later, naked with the hose still running, sunburnt beyond belief. He spent months in hospital recovering from third-degree burns and learning to walk again.

"2016 was a pretty dramatic year," he says. But he's not talking about his horrific accident.

He's talking about his beloved Archies, which this year celebrate 25 years of thumbing their nose at the "art snobs". In fact, even that triple near-death experience couldn't stop him turning up just months later to the Bald Archy opening to hear Maude, his sulphur-crested cockatoo, announce the winner.

"There were two pictures that year. One was of Cardinal Pell, the other was of the Queen and Malcolm Turnbull," says Batey. "I was just out of hospital and I had a friend who was a nurse bring me over to Canberra and I was in this wheelchair and we're going from one painting to another.

"I thought, there's Pell, that's a bit plain, he's in his robes, I don't get the joke. And then Sara [Hogwood, the Watson Art Centre's program manager] asked me what I thought of the Pell one, how amazing it was.

"So on second look I saw that the nose morphed into the biggest, loose penis you've ever seen in your life. He was wearing a rainbow badge, a devil's tail twisted around his waist, he was giving the middle finger."

The work, Nothing To Say, by Pat Hudson, won the Bald Archy that year and Batey thought the church would have a field day.

But it was the monarchists "that went insane".

"I was getting 30 emails a day, 'It's treason', they said, 'I haven't seen it myself but I'm told it's disgusting and it should be removed'.

"It got worse ... Emails came from all over the world. 'I'm in Canada', one woman said, 'You should be beheaded and if you don't take it down we will take it that Australia is at war with Canada'."

Batey's never wanted to go to war with anyone. Well maybe with the art establishment. Indeed, that's how the Bald Archies started back in 1994.

Batey moved to Coolac in 1980 and ran a successful restaurant out of an old stone building for a few years. The locals would turn up in their utes with extra beer in the back and often not head home til three in the morning.

"Mind you, I'd never been in a restaurant kitchen in my life, I'd thrown a few good dinner parties, sure, but if someone says open a restaurant, don't do it."

Business died out when random breath testing was introduced a few years later - and Batey thought he might get back to the business he knew best - theatre.

"But the industry wasn't what it was," says the man who was one of the pioneers of Australian theatre. He'd worked with June Salter, Ruth Cracknell, Frank Thring, Noel Ferrier. He was working with Barry Humphries in 1957 and the pair of them dreamed up Dame Edna Everage.

"We were touring together in Twelfth Night through regional Victoria and we didn't have big parts so we had all this time backstage to work on this review we were writing. We came up with this average Melbourne housewife. I'd always thought Edna was one of the funniest names I'd ever heard."

Decades later that's the world Batey wanted to get back into.

"So I thought, let's start a festival. I couldn't call it an arts festival because no one would have come, let's be honest. Coolac's got a population of about 45, give or take a few itinerant shearers, so we called it the Festival of Fun."

Batey called in a few favours and some of Australia's best entertainers wandered down the Hume Highway to help an old mate.

"We had jazz, cabaret, comedy, classical music, I thought we needed a visual arts component. The Archibalds were being particularly pompous at the time so I said let's get 'em."

And more than 25 years later he's still doing exactly that.

He has some favourite portraits from over the years.

Vincent de Gouw's John Howard Washes His Hands Of Pauline Hanson (Apologies To Manet) "was just delicious", he says. He got plenty of calls from "crazy" Hanson supporters about that one.

Xavier Ghazi, who's won the Bald Archy five times, pushed the envelope with Bad Ass...ange in 2011, showing Julian Assange urinating in Uncle Sam's top hat.

James Brennan's The Official Portrait of the Danish Royal Family in 2008 was "beautifully cast".

"Mary and Fred look like a modern-day version of a Gainsborough family group," he recalls.

"The princess is sitting on the throne breastfeeding the baby, Fred's leaning on the back of the chair in his jocks and thongs with a Heineken, there's a Tasmanian tiger rug, two totally stoned Tasmanian devils.

"The calls went on and on non-stop for weeks: 'Mr Batey have you heard from the palace? Well you will!' In the end I had a call from the Danish press association who wanted to publish it in every newspaper in Denmark."

There was a year when Batey heard from "the palace": Buckingham Palace.

"Remember when Rolf Harris had that show where he painted the portrait of the Queen. Well this one was of the Queen painting Rolf Harris, he was naked, spread-eagled on a chair, Charles was peeking around a corner. It turns out the artist had sent a copy of it to Buckingham Palace and a couple of months later she responded. It got to me somehow and it was lovely, how the Queen was so amused by the painting - this was before Rolf got himself into some trouble though."

Batey will be 85 in August, he's still recovering from the fall, his body a little frail, his mind as sharp as ever.

He does wonder what will become of the Bald Archies when he's no longer around. There's been some discussions with the National Portrait Gallery but nothing is certain.

He says a few things have happened in recent years that may well save the art prize, and what it stands for.

"When satirical cartoonist Bill Leak died last year, three prime ministers turned up at the funeral. I think that raised comic portraiture up the ladder of the art world, gave us more standing."

But more substantial is the support that the prize has received this year from Sydney philanthropist Dr Jerry Schwartz.

"Honestly, we needed financial help. The first year I had to pretend I had the prize money, and you can't collect it all through the small entry fee we charge people.

"I saw something in the news about Jerry opening the first five-star hotel in Sydney for decades, the Sofitel Darling Harbour.

"There'd actually been a portrait of him some years ago so I tracked him down, I thought he must have plenty of money, and he was happy to offer up not only the $10,000 cash first prize but a few other things as well."

Batey is hopeful this support might also allow him to tour the exhibition to places it hasn't been for a while, including Melbourne and Newcastle.

The winner of the prize will be announced in Sydney this month.

"Maude can't wait to check out the fancy hotel," says Batey of his beloved cockatoo, who's been his companion since 1982. "All my life I'd wanted a cockatoo as a pet and I was in Canberra having lunch with a friend and we walked past a pet shop and there she was."

These days Maude flies free around Coolac, stopping by in the cool of the afternoon to check in on Batey. Her "disciples", as Batey calls them, join her on the lawn, squawking and carrying on.

"To think that now she's an educated art critic, she has a PhD from the Marilyn Monroe University in Little Rock Arkansas and she's thinking of setting up an Instagram account.

"Imagine the things she would say to those art snobs."

This years's Bald Archy Art Prize exhibition is at the Sofitel Sydney Darling Harbour from March 20.

There is also a Best of the Bald Archies exhibition running in Wagga Wagga until May 13 at the Museum of the Riverina's Historic Council Chambers site.