Petition to put Gina Rinehart's portrait in Times Square goes viral
When Gina Rinehart's portrait featured in an exhibition at the National Gallery in Canberra, she demanded it be taken down.
The gallery refused, and said it would stay hanging in the gallery until the end of the end of the exhibit on July 21st.
Rinehart's outrageous request to take down the artwork went viral on social media, and even saw her feature on Stephen Colbert's late night TV show.
Now, comedian Dan Ilic has started a petition to get the artwork displayed in New York City's iconic Times Square.
Ilic told The New Daily that it is important to celebrate Australia’s art and artists, because “not many other people are”.
“The person who was seeking for it to be removed has a unique place in Australian culture and politics, and uses their power for things that are very much in line with their interests,” he said.
“Us, using our own power as a community to try and leverage a lot of little people’s contributions to this celebration of great Australian art, is a great thing.”
Ilic said people approached him to launch the fundraising campaign because “I’ve become the person to do such things”.
“I happened to go to an art event on the weekend with some people who know [artist] Vincent Namatjirawell and I asked them to check if he would like it,” he said.
“He said it’s very funny, so we went ahead with it.”
A 10-minute slot in Times Square costs $16,000, however Ilic is campaigning to raise $30,000 to beam Rinehart’s portrait into one of the busiest locations on the planet, with any excess money being donated to Indigenous-led youth climate network Seed Mob.
He said, “By the very nature of that organisation, they’re at odds with a lot of what big corporations like Hancock Prospecting are all about.”
Ilic said he was confident about passing the $30,000 goal and making the 10-minute slot a reality, after already raising over 70 percent of his goal.
“There is an old maxim in crowdfunding: If you reach 50 per cent within the 50 per cent mark of time, you’ll get the rest,” he said.
“We hit that earlier this morning and it’s about halfway now, so I think we’ll get the rest.”
Ilic has previously campaigned to have features in Times Square, with one such ad highlighting Australia's lack of climate change action ahead of the COP26 meeting in 2021.
Image credits: Dan Ilic - Indiegogo