Dhungutti artist Blak Douglas (aka Adam Hill) has won the $100,000 Archibald Prize for his portrait of Wiradjuri artist Karla Dickens – the second Indigenous artist to win the award in its 101 years, after Western Arrernte artist Vincent Namatjira in 2020.
This is Douglas’ fifth time as an Archibald finalist.
Douglas painted Dickens, a friend and in his words “legendary practitioner”, knee-deep in the muddy floods of her hometown in Lismore, Bundjalung Country – with a leaking bucket of water in each hand and a cranky look.
The portrait, titled Moby Dickens, “serves as a mouthpiece for the disaster and its impact on that community,” Douglas told ABC News last week when his portrait was announced as a finalist.
It also speaks to Dickens’ frustration with the government’s response to the February and March floods.
Dickens told ABC Arts in April: “[I told him] “As long as you make it grumpy. I want to be grumpy.'”
“If [the painting] makes one more person aware of what happened where I live, I’m really thankful for that.”
The jury also praised artist Jude Rae’s portrait of Australian engineer and inventor Saul Griffith.
Artist duo Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro won the $40,000 Sulman Prize for “subject painting, genre painting, or mural project” for their mixed-media painting Raiko and Shuten-dōji.
Nicholas Harding won the $50,000 Wynne Prize for landscape painting for his work Eora.
More to come.
Exhibitions for the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman awards open at the Art Gallery of New South Wales on Saturday, May 14.
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