The Bald Archy Prize 2025
7 February 2025 – 23 March 2025
Australia’s premier satirical art prize, the Bald Archy Prize, celebrates the lighter side of art and the larrikin Australian spirit, hosting portraits that will make you think, make you talk and most of all make you laugh.
Created in 1994 as a spoof of that more serious competition, the Bald Archy Prize provides artists of all styles and standards with a genuine opportunity to create portrait paintings of humour, dark satire, light comedy or caricature. Known internationally as the only art competition in the world to be judged by a sulphur-crested cockatoo named Maude, the satirical side of this event encapsulates the irreverent, larrikin Australian spirit in a way that appeals to people from all walks of life.
2025 Bald Archy Portrait Prize Winner
Despicable Ploy, by artist Phil Meatchem, was the winner of the 2025 Bald Archy Prize. A Gru-inspired image, Despicable Ploy is a satirical take on Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s proposed nuclear power infrastructure plan.
Mr Meatchem won the $10,000 prize for his painting after it was announced at the Canberra Potters and Watson Arts Centre on Friday 21 March 2025.
History of the Bald Archy
Judged by Professor Maude Cockatoo, the world’s premier avian art critic, the Bald Archy prize gives a genuine opportunity to artists of all styles and standards to create portrait paintings of humour, dark satire, light comedy or caricature. In its’ first year the prize struck a chord with the public and a nerve with the arts establishment.
“It was meant to amuse – apparently a problem with people who believe audible laughter shouldn’t be permitted in an art gallery, let alone unsolicited conversation with a complete stranger”
– Peter Batey OAM, 2015
While the Coolac Festival of Fun was retired after 12 years, due to public demand the Bald Archy Prize lives on. After the passing of Peter Batey in 2019, the administration of the Bald Archy Prize was handed over to the Museum of the Riverina, Wagga Wagga. It is now internationally known and has been exhibited across Australia. Winning subjects have included Kerry Packer, Shane Warne, John Howard, Pauline Hanson and myriad other Australian icons.
The Judging
The Bald Archy Prize is currently the only art competition in the world judged by a sulphur crested cockatoo.
With an online PhD from the Marilyn Munro University of Little Rock, Professor Maude Cockatoo is the most qualified art critic, avian or otherwise, in Australia (according to Maude). As Coolac’s Visual Arts Laureate, Maude has been the sole judge of the Bald Archy Prize from its inception at the 1994 Coolac Festival of Fun.
Maude’s number one rule for a prize-winner is that it must be funny. Her idea of humour, according to a 2015 interview includes, “wit, slapstick, satire, vulgarity, farce, black comedy, irreverence and everything else that falls between high and low comedy”. On the other hand, Maude loathes ‘hate portraiture’, or ‘soap box art’ as she calls it.
