Archibald prize 2025: Julie Fragar wins for portrait of artist Justene Williams

The Guardian

09-05-2025

Julie Fragar has won the 2025 Archibald prize for her portrait of her fellow artist Justene Williams.
Announced as the winner of the $100,000 prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales on Friday, the winning work was selected unanimously by the judges from 904 entries and 57 finalists.Fragar is just the 13th woman to win the prize in its 104-year history.
Accepting the prize, Fragar said she chose to paint Williams 'for three reasons: she's a dear friend, as a great artist and to capture her other worldliness.'
The Archibald, Australia's most prestigious portraiture prize, is awarded to the best portrait of a person 'distinguished in art, letters, science or politics' painted by an Australian resident and has been running since 1921.
Alongside the Archibald, the $50,000 Wynne prize for landscape painting and figurative sculpture was also awarded on Friday, to Jude Rae for her work Pre-dawn Sky over Port Botany Container Terminal. The artist said it was a depiction of 'what I see from my bathroom window, four flights up from Redfern Hill'.
'I see the lights of the container terminal blazing away 24/7, looking very small beneath the vastness of the sky,' she said, accepting her award.
And the $40,000 Sulman prize for genre, subject and mural painting, went to Gene A'Hern for Sky Painting. The artist, who hails from Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, used oil and oil stick on board for the work, which he said was 'about home and place'.
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A record 2,394 entries were received across the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes this year, with more than 70% of finalists across the three awards being female artists.
More than one third of this year's 57 Archibald finalists were painted by first time nominees.
Celebrity sitters were a minority; instead, artists dominated as subjects, with a dozen finalists being self-portraits and 22 being portraits of another artist.
Last week, artist Abdul Abdullah won the $3,000 packing room prize category – decided by the AGNSW staff who hang the paintings each year – for his portrait of artist Jason Phu, also a finalist this year.
Abdullah's playful painting, titled No mountain high enough, depicted Phu sitting astride a horse.
The Archibald, Wynne and Sulman finalists all go on public display at the AGNSW from Saturday until 17 August.
The Archibald finalists will then head to Geelong, Gosford, Muswellbrook, Mudgee, Shoalhaven and Coffs Harbour later this year and in 2026.