Julie Fragar has won the $100,000 Archibald Prize with her portrait of fellow artist Justene Williams.
The winning work is titled Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene), and is painted in grayscale, showing the artist floating among the stars.
The title comes from Williams’ recent endurance performance in New Zealand – Making do rhymes with poo – about the labour of juggling a day job with art making and motherhood.
The winner was selected from 903 entries and 57 finalists, with entries painted in the past year from at least one live sitting.
The award, widely regarded as Australia’s most prestigious art prize, is judged by the trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Jude Rae has won the $50,000 Wynne Prize for landscape painting or sculpture, for the oil on linen work Pre-dawn sky over Port Botany container terminal.
The $40,000 Sulman Prize for genre painting went to Katoomba-based artist Gene A’Hern for Sky painting, beating a record field of 732 entries.
Maud Page, who was announced in March as the new director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, has congratulated all of the artists who entered the 2025 awards.
For the first time in 2025, women artists made up the majority of finalists in each of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prize competitions.
Earlier in May, the $3000 Packing Room Prize selected by the gallery’s art handling staff went to Abdul Abdullah for a portrait of his friend Jason Phu.
The finalists for all three prizes will be on show at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from Saturday until August 17, before touring Victoria and NSW.
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