Emily Hartley-Skudder on painting a protest for a heritage loo

Emily Hartley-Skudder's new exhibition CAMEO has opened at Te Manawa Museum in Palmerston North. The show is her response to Ladies Rest, the city's 1936 Art Deco public toilet block in the Square, which Lonely Planet has named one of New Zealand's five most picturesque toilet blocks and which received a Category 2 heritage listing. The title comes from Community Action by Mothers and Existing Other users, the early 2000s protest group that stopped the building being absorbed into an information centre. Hartley-Skudder is the inaugural recipient of the $40,000 Fair Trust Art Prize, created under the will of collector Eileen Fair specifically to let a mid-career artist develop one major new body of work. Her practice revolves around hyper-realistic oil paintings of cleaning products, bathroomware and what she calls the artificial ordinary.