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 and since July 2015 the prize has been AU$100,000.
Sir William Dobell was an Australian portrait and landscape artist of the 20th century. Dobell won the Archibald Prize, Australia's premier award for portrait artists on three occasions. The Dobell Prize is named in his honour.
William Robinson AO is an Australian painter and lithographer.
Davida Frances Allen is an Australian painter, film maker and writer.
Sam Fullbrook was an Australian artist who was a winner of the Archibald Prize for portraiture and the Wynne Prize for landscape. He was described as "last of the bushman painters". However Fullbrook was fine art-trained and his sophisticated works are in every State art museum in Australia and international collections.
Lloyd Frederic Rees AC CMG was an Australian landscape painter who twice won the Wynne Prize for his landscape paintings.
Ben Quilty is an Australian artist and social commentator, who has won a series of painting prizes: the 2014 Prudential Eye Award, 2011 Archibald Prize, and 2009 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize. He has been described as one of Australia's most famous living artists.
John Beard is a Welsh artist and painter born in Aberdare, Wales, now based in Sydney, Lisbon and London.
Del Kathryn Barton is an Australian artist who began drawing at a young age, and studied at UNSW Art & Design at the University of New South Wales. She soon became known for her psychedelic fantasy works which she has shown in solo and group exhibitions across Australia and overseas. In 2008 and 2013 she won the Archibald Prizes for portraiture presented by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 2015 her animated film Oscar Wilde’s The Nightingale and the Rose won the Film Victoria Erwin Rado Award for Best Australian Short Film.
Tony Lloyd is an Australian contemporary artist. Lloyd's paintings are influenced by cinema, in particular Film Noir and Science Fiction, and the Romantic conception of the sublime. Lloyd's largely monochromatic paintings are realist in style.
McLean Edwards is an Australian painter who currently lives and works in London, England. He attended the Canberra School of Art.
Tim Storrier AM is an Australian artist who won the 2017 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize with The Lunar Savant, a portrait of fellow artist McLean Edwards.
Glenn Barkley is an Australian artist, independent curator and writer based in Sydney, Australia. As an artist he is represented by Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney, Niagara Galleries, Melbourne and Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami and his works are held in institutional collections such as the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and Artbank.
Kate Beynon is an Australian contemporary artist based in Melbourne. Her work addresses ideas of transcultural life, feminism, and notions of hybridity in today’s world. She is known for her depictions of the Chinese heroine Li Ji, who is situated in a modern context. Through Li Ji, Beynon explores a hybrid Australian existence and a sense of belonging within a mixed and multi-layered identity. Beynon is currently doing a PhD in Fine Art by Research at Monash University.
Vincent Fantauzzo, is a Melbourne-based Australian portrait artist known for his award winning portraits of Heath Ledger, Brandon Walters, Matt Moran, Emma Hack, Baz Luhrmann, Asher Keddie and his son Luca. He has won the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize twice, the Archibald Packing Room Prize, and the Archibald People's Choice Award four times.
Alex Seton is an Australian artist, known for his contemporary use of marble carving. He also works in sculpture, photography, video and installation.
Julia deVille is an artist, jeweller and taxidermist who only uses subjects in her taxidermy that have died of natural causes. She is an advocate for animal rights, and began including taxidermy in her art work in 2002, combining it with her jewellery making practice to produce small sculptures and installations. DeVille’s interest in memento mori traditions of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries and Victorian mourning jewellery inform her wearable pieces.
Mikala Dwyer is an Australian artist born in 1959 in Sydney. She is a contemporary sculptor who was shortlisted with fellow artist Justene Williams to represent Australia at the 2019 Venice Biennale.
Ann Thomson is an Australian painter and sculptor. She is best known for her large-scale public commissions Ebb Tide (1987) for the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre and Australia Felix (1992) for the Seville World Expo. In 1998 she won the Art Gallery of New South Wales' Wynne Prize. Her work is held in national and international collections, including: the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Newcastle Art Gallery, Newcastle, Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid and Villa Haiss Museum, Germany.
Abdul Abdullah is a Sydney-based Australian multidisciplinary artist, the younger brother of Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, also an artist. Abdul Abdullah has been a finalist several times in the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes. He creates provocative works that make political statements and query identity, in particular looking at being a Muslim in Australia, and examines the themes of alienation and othering.
