The 52 finalists for the Archibald Prize, as well as finalists for the Wynne and Sulman Prizes, have been revealed.
Meanwhile Claus Stangl has won the 31st annual Packing Room Prize for his 3D-style portrait of portrait of Academy Award-winning and Emmy-nominated Aotearoa New Zealand writer, director, and actor Taika Waititi.
The Packing Room Prize is awarded by the team at the Art Gallery of New South Wales who unpack and install each Archibald entry. Brett Cuthbertson, head packer, says that Waititi is one of his favourite film makers: “I love his humour and how he sees the world in a way that other people don’t—that twisted, humorous way—and that’s the way Claus has painted the picture; it’s Taika all over.”
Stangl, a Sydney-based artist who was born in England, explains that the 3D-style approach to Waititi’s portrait pays homage to their shared love of cinema: “I wanted to create a portrait that captured Taika’s sense of humour and to execute it in a playful cinematic style, reminiscent of the movies of the seventies and eighties that were popular when he was child.”
The 52 finalists (from 816 entries) for the Archibald Prize range from emerging to established artists across Australia and include:
Mostafa Azimitabar, Natasha Bieniek, Daniel Boyd, Joanna Braithwaite, Keith Burt, Ann Cape, Yvette Coppersmith, Emily Crockford, Jonathan Dalton, Anh Do, Blak Douglas, Yvonne East, Jeremy Eden, David Fenoglio, Hong Fu, Eliza Gosse, Robert Hannaford, Tsering Hannaford, Katherine Hattam, HEGO, Yoshio Honjo, Ksenija Hrnjak, Laura Jones, Solomon Kammer, Jasper Knight, Kim Leutwyler, Richard Lewer, Dapeng Liu, Kathrin Longhurst, Fiona Lowry, Mathew Lynn, Catherine McGuiness, Noel McKenna, Robert Malherbe, Lewis Miller, Vincent Namatjira, Paul Newton, Meagan Pelham, James Powditch, Jude Rae, Jordan Richardson, Thom Roberts, Joan Ross, Wendy Sharpe, Claus Stangl, Nick Stathopoulos, Ross Townsend, Avraham Vofsi, Felix von Dallwitz, Natasha Walsh, Michael Zavros and Caroline Zilinsky.
The 29 finalists of the 2022 Sulman Prize, which is awarded to the best subject painting, genre painting or mural project in oil, acrylic, watercolour, or mixed media, are:
Victoria Atkinson, Rat Bedlington, Ash Coates, Will Cooke, Brodie Cullen, Holly Greenwood, Neil Haddon, Amber Hammad, Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, Natalya Hughes, Belem Lett, Kim Leutwyler, Noel McKenna, Gigi Malherbe, Danie Mellor, Sally M Nangala Mulda, Vincent Namatjira, Claudia Nicholson, Jason Phu, Rodney Pople, Leslie Rice, Adrian Jangala Robertson, Charles Rose, Wendy Sharpe, Rosie Tarku King, Sophie Victoria, Inawintji Williamson, Christopher Zanko, and Louise Zhang.
And the finalists for the 2022 Wynne Prize, awarded to best landscape painting of Australian scenery or figurative sculpture, include:
Clara Adolphs, Julianne Ross Allcorn, Wona Bae and Charlie Lawler, Betty Chimney and Raylene Walatinna, Hayley Panangka Coulthard, Nellie Coulthard, Dean Cross, Lucy Culliton, Juan Ford, Nicholas Harding, Geoff Harvey, Judith Pungarta Inkamala, Bill Tjampitjinpa Kenda, Juz Kitson, Sam Leach, Noel McKenna, Danie Mellor, Betty Muffler, Dhambit Munuŋgurr, Yukultji Napangati, Angus Nivison, Thea Anamara Perkins, James Powditch, Gordon Pupangamirri with David Tipuamantumirri and Barry Kantilla and Graham Tipungwuti, Alison Puruntatameri, Jude Rae, Gemma Rasdall, Margaret Richards, Sally Scales, Christophe Stibio, Tjapaltjarri, Rhoda Tjitayi, Umoona Senior Women’s Collaborative, and John R Walker.
Winners of the Archibald Prize, along with the Wynne and Sulman Prize, will be announced on Friday 13 May 2022.
The finalists in all three prizes will be exhibited at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from Saturday 14 May to Sunday 28 August 2022. The Archibald Prize finalist works will then tour to Victoria and regional New South Wales until July 2023.
Archibald Prize 2022
Art Gallery of New South Wales
14 May—28 August
65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art is an extraordinary account of the unique art of this continent, published alongside a landmark exhibition at the Potter Museum of Art. Necessary and urgent, it tells the story of Indigenous Australian art; a new art history unlike anything we’ve seen. For Jane O’Sullivan, it’s a remarkable and must-read book.
In a new series of illustrated postcards available as a free gift with purchase only at the Art Guide Bookstore, Oslo Davis takes on classic and contemporary art terms and genres and reimagines what they could be referring to.
With so much to choose from, we’ve rounded up the major summer exhibitions in each capital city, open all summer long. Spanning Yayoi Kusama, Magritte, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, and many more.
Julie Mehretu’s first solo exhibition in the southern hemisphere, now showing at the Museum of Contemporary Art, attempts to harness the urgency and energy of the Ethiopian-born New Yorker’s multilayered painting practice.
For Patrick Pound, whose new installation The Museum of Falling is on show now at the City Gallery, the arrangement of objects and images has long blurred the line between fact and fiction, jolting our perception in surprising and unusual ways.
Isaac Julien’s 2022 video work Once Again…(Statues Never Die) exposes the unseen emotional registers inherent to the struggle for colonial repatriation by mapping the places where poetics and politics intersect.
