Tasmania hails Australia’s first colonial statue as a piss-take – and an ‘extraordinary political statement’

Research shows the statue held by Tasmania's Maritime Museum was created in the 1830s, likely as a satirical depiction of George Arthur, the fourth governor of Van Diemen's Land

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A surprise discovery in Tasmania of a historic sculpture may also be the country's first example of political - and quite rude - protest art.

Tasmania's Maritime Museum has released images of a 1.3-metre sandstone statue of a well-dressed colonial gentleman, apparently designed as part of a fountain to show him behaving in a decidedly ungentlemanly way.