FONAS plate auction - 15 November

Hey I was at this last year! Well, when you are on to a good thing, stick to it.  It's a nice evening, the wife and I sneak in an early Darlo dinner (recommend the argentine meat platter at Boca and the always good messina for gelato) and then head off and try and donate some money to the Friends of the National Art School (that's where they get the FONAS from ... but you probably gathered that already).

This is, wait for it .... a really mixed bag.  Over one hundred lots of the great and good and the people kindly trying (like Labor minister Tanya Plibersek who should really stick to her day job of taxing and spending). Quite a few familiar names, Reg Mombassa, Luke Scibberas, Guy Maestri, Wendy Sharpe et al.  My wife and I chose two plates each to have a flutter on. My top picks were Alun Rhys Jones' CMYK skull (pictured above) and Deborah Beck's NAS 2012 (pictured below).  The Mrs loved Annabel Butler's Tractor (no picture, she hasn't joined the iphone world yet, I know) and Lauren Murphy's Bike. Also in the mix was Maryanne Wick's Lizotica Ceramica and Caroline Karllsen's Untitled.  Well, unfortunately just due to the way they close the silent auction around the room in order our back up plates were off the market before the main gigs were decided.  My wife lost out in a dodgy finish as some art thief stole the tractor with a bid after the curtain had come down (admittedly he would say "as" the curtain was closing). No such bad luck for me with Alun's skull joining the Big Lamington collection.

Points:  3 to Alun, good to see an Iain Dawson alumni around the traps.  I love the phantom, and I love memento mori in art, and I really like this skull.  2 to Annabel's tractor.  I have a 3 year old art critic who would've gone nuts for this, but rest assured, there will be some vehicles arriving for Christmas, just probably not of the art variety and more of the tonka variety. 1 point will go to Deborah Beck, this appealed to my parochial instincts (and by the way, what was with the latest art collector mag kind of slagging off parochialism in art? I mean what is wrong with Australian collectors preferring to buy Australian artists?).  Well done to all.  Also highly commended to Todd Fuller volunteering to man the check out queue - a thankless task that I will give thanks for.