Controversial winner of inaugural 1974 celebration

Rotary Club of Horsham East’s inaugural art fair in 1974 featured a controversial winner.

Leading The Age art critic Patrick Mccaughey judged the event, suggesting the winning entry might be Horsham’s version of Jackson Pollock’s ‘Blue Poles’.

Then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam had famously bought Blue Poles for the National Gallery of Australia the previous year, for $1.3-million.

Mccaughey, also an art historian, said about the painting, ‘never had such a picture moved and disturbed the Australian public’.

His selection of modern painting Sigh’s Harp elicited a similar surprised response from a Wimmera art fair audience. Peter Tyndall was inspired to paint Sigh’s Harp after spending several days lying on his back watching clouds.

Tyndall went on to enjoy a celebrated career and is one of the most widely recognised Australian artists in the past five decades.

He has artworks in virtually every major public and private collection, including the national gallery, Canberra Monash University, Art Gallery of NSW, Vizard Foundation, University of Melbourne, Smorgon MCA Collection and the National Gallery of Victoria Art.

Sigh’s Harp was donated to Horsham Regional Art Gallery and remains part of the collection today.

Art fair organisers anticipate it will be on display during this year’s Wimmera Art Fair.

Eighty people attended an inaugural art fair, with more than 200 people attending the 2016 event.

The proceeds from the 1974 art fair went to Wimmera Base Hospital’s $250,000 centenary building appeal.