Bytes: ARCHIBALD PRIZE

Sunday, June 8, 2025

ARCHIBALD PRIZE

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The Archibald Prize is an Australian portraiture art prize for painting, generally seen as the most prestigious portrait prize in Australia. It was first awarded in 1921 after the receipt of a bequest from J. F. Archibald, the editor of The Bulletin who died in 1919.

It is administered by the trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales and awarded for "the best portrait, preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in Art, Letters, Science or Politics, painted by an artist resident in Australia during the twelve months preceding the date fixed by the trustees for sending in the pictures".

The Archibald Prize has been awarded annually since 1921 (with two exceptions – in 1964 and 9080 the trustees decided no entry was worthy of the award) and since July 2015 the prize has been AU$100,000.

Since 1988 two other prizes have been added to the Archibald prize event:

The People's Choice Award, in which votes from the public viewing the finalists are collected to find a winner was first awarded in 1988. The award comes with a monetary prize of A$3,500.

In 1992 the Packing Room Prize was established, in which the staff who receive the portraits and install them in the gallery vote for their choice of winner. The prize has been A$1,500. To date there has never been an Archibald Prize winner who has also been a Packing Room Prize winner. For this reason winning the Packing Room Prize is known as "the kiss of death award".

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1921 winner:

Desbrowe Annear by W B McInnes, the first Archibald Prize winner (1921)

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Some of this year’s finalists (selected by me as a representative display, not all liked by me, click on the following for the full 57 finalists and artist comments: https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/archibald/2025/ ):

Clara Adolphs

Adrian Jangala Robertson (paintbrush and hat)

Billy Bain

Rona and Pig at Palm Valley

Natasha Bieniek

Cressida Campbell

Peter Ke Heng Chen

I'm a little fish in New York (ripples of ambition)

Jonathan Dalton

Natasha in the other room

Jeremy Eden

Felix Cameron

Remy Faint

Ramesh (with mask)

David Fairbairn

Head of BF no 2

Jaq Grantford

Sisters

Tsering Hannaford

Meditation on time (a left-handed self-portrait)

Kelly Maree

Jackie O

Chris O’Doherty (aka Reg Mombassa)

Self-portrait with nose tube

Sally Ryan

Lette loose

Vipoo Srivilasa

Self-portrait as a cat king

Peter Wegner

Portrait of Sue Chrysanthou

Kaylene Whiskey

From comic to canvas

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. . . . and the winner is . . .

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2025 Archibald Prize:

Julie Fragar won the 2025 $100,000 Archibald Prize for her portrait of friend and fellow artist Justene Williams, Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene).

In her artist statement, Fragar explained the phrase "Flagship Mother" came from a recent endurance performance Williams did in New Zealand. "It was about the labour of getting by," she wrote. "For Justene, like many women artists, that means the labour of a day job … of making art to deadlines, and the labour (and love) of being a mother. . . . . I made this painting because I wanted to honour the incredible multiverse of artwork that seems always to be exploding from her."

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People’s Choice Award:

Voting ongoing.

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Packing Room Prize:

Abdul Abdullah

No mountain high enough

The man sitting astride the horse in Abdul Abdullah’s painting is Jason Phu, an artist whose often humorous work references folk tales, personal narratives, cartoons, jokes, and demons and gods from Chinese culture. Phu won the 2015 Sulman Prize and was a finalist in this year’s Archibald Prize with a portrait of actor Hugo Weaving.

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Some past winners:

2024: