Amos Gebhardt, winner of the 2024 National Photographic Portrait Prize, with their winning work, Alexis with moon, 2024, a portrait of author Alexis Wright. Photo: Mark Mohell.
Among a range of portraits, from famous to notorious, remarkable to glorious, the 2024 winners of the National Photographic Portrait Prize and the Darling Portrait Prize were announced today (21 June).
Judges Portrait Gallery Director Curatorial and Collection Isobel Parker Philip, Director of Sydney’s UNSW Galleries, and curator of the 18th Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art José de Silva and Curator PHOTO Australia Pippa Milne selected Alexis with moon by Amos Gebhardt as the winner of the National Photographic Portrait Prize.
The National Photographic Portrait Prize was initially conceived by the National Portrait Gallery as a platform to support and celebrate photographic portraiture in Australia. Now in its 17th year, the prize has become an annual highlight, providing both emerging and established artists an institutional platform that connects them with a broad, public audience.
Thirty four finalists have been selected this year, from almost 2000 entrants. Among the finalists are four Canberra artists – Brenda L Croft, Prue Hazelgrove, Tamara Henderson and Zoe Helene Karouzos.
This year’s winner, artist Amos Gebhardt, said: “I am feeling so elated. I didn’t sleep much last night.
“This portrait is actually part of a larger series. I wanted to work with different people who I love and respect, people who I see as visionaries or luminaries of some kind, who work in different ways to address systems of power and liberation in their life and work.
“To me, Alexis’ novels are these beautiful drops of wrapped up wisdom. I wanted to honour her and the impact she has had on me. To be able to pair her with the moon felt quite a beautiful link because she is a luminary and the moon is a powerful symbol of luminescence.”
Noel McKenna with his Darling Prize winning work, William Nuttall with horses in field, 2023. Photo: Mark Mohell.
Presented alongside the National Photographic Portrait Prize for the first time is the Darling Portrait Prize, a biennial national prize for Australian portrait painting.
Honouring the legacy of Mr L Gordon Darling AC CMG, this prize supports the evolving notion of Australian identity while celebrating emerging and established portrait painters.
Twenty four finalists have been selected for this prize, from almost 1000 entries, with local artist Surya Bajracharya among the group.
The Darling Portrait Prize, judged by National Portrait Gallery Director Bree Pickering, Art Gallery of NSW Curator First Nations Art Erin Vink, and Art Historian and Critic Tara Heffernan has been won by Noel McKenna for William Nuttall with horses in field.
“This is an energetic and unexpected portrait,” the judges said of McKenna’s work. “The subject shares the work with animals and the landscape. It is joyous in its execution and demonstrates the skill of an established Australian artist whose practice is assured in every way.”
McKenna, who lives and works on Gadigal Country in Sydney, is a highly recognised and established artist. The winner of the Sulman Prize in 1994 and a five-time winner of the Art Gallery of NSW Trustee’s prize for watercolour, McKenna’s paintings often explore everyday scenarios and highlight the relationship between humans and animals.
His winning portrait is of his long-time art dealer and friend.
“Prizes are a leap of faith for any institution, you never quite know what you are going to get,” National Portrait Gallery’s Curatorial and Collection Director Isobel Parker Philip said.
“What a prize will showcase is not an intentional narrative, but a litmus test of what feels urgent and important in the contemporary moment.”
And what that looks and feels like in 2024 may come as no surprise; the artists selected as finalists are interested in identity, both how it is expressed and how it relates and interacts with the world around us.
What may come as more of a surprise is the emotional scale these explorations take.
“What has emerged as the recurring beat in both of the prizes this year,” Parker Phillip explains, “is a sense of the intimate and the introspective.”
Of all of the finalists, Parker Phillip describes “a pensiveness in many of the works on show”.
“They are tender and thoughtful in who they depict, many of them mentors for the creatives, as well close family members and the self, but also how they depict.”
Also among the prize winners are those selected by the Gallery’s art handlers. This year, Shelley Xue’s 阿谊 (ah Yi) has been selected the winner for the NPPP Art Handlers’ award, while Nena Salobir receives the Darling Portrait Prize honour for Self portrait on washcloth. While different in medium, these portraits both speak to intimacy and ephemerality, complicating the notion of portraiture and what it can be.
The National Portrait Prize and the Darling Portrait Prize is open to the public from Saturday 22 June, 2024, and runs until 13 October, 2024. For more information visit National Portrait Gallery.
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