LONDON: Catherine, Princess of Wales, has pre-empted criticism of her decision this week to re-release an edited photo of her and her husband taken on their wedding day in 2011.

The official portrait photo (main picture) was posted on social media on 29 April to mark the couple’s 13^th wedding anniversary along with an explanatory statement by the Princess.

“After the controversy back in March over the photo of me and my children taken by my husband and slightly edited by me, I thought it best to be upfront and declare that I have indeed done some slight editing to tweak my wedding-day portrait before its re-release,” the statement said.

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SYDNEY: Brisbane artist Sue Ridge has set a record for the prestigious Archibald Prize for portraiture even before judging of this year’s entries starts at the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney.

Ms Ridge, the famously left-wing provocateur best known for her interpretive works using human excrement, has had six portraits accepted for hanging as finalists in this year’s prize.

They include (clockwise from top right in the photo above) former prime ministers Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, and Scott Morrison, current Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, and WA Liberal Senator Michaelia Cash.

Ms Ridge said she was flattered by the gallery’s acceptance of so many of her works.

“This is a breakthrough, given the resistance to my entries in previous years which some purists claimed had broken the prize’s rule that a portrait needed to be ‘painted from life’, meaning the subject had to sit not shit for the portrait,” she explained.

“But thankfully the Archibald trustees declared that as long as my portraits were painted using the sitter’s own excrement, they’d be accepted.

“I’m also very flattered that the Art Gallery of NSW will hang all six of my entries in their own dedicated room, although I suspect that decision may have something to do with the smell and blowflies,” she said.

Finalists in the Archibald Prize will be announced at the end of this month with the winner revealed on 7 June.

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