Congratulations to Amos Gebhardt, who has won the 2024 National Photographic Portrait Prize for Alexis with moon, a diptych portrait of award-winning First Nations author Alexis Wright. Gebhardt takes home a cash prize of $30,000, as well as $20,000 worth of photography equipment from Canon Australia.
“Alexis Wright is a noted First Nations storyteller whose work collapses linear time and connects to ideas of the cosmos,” says the judging panel of the winning work. “Gebhardt’s portrait, lit only by the moon, speaks directly to the sitter’s work. Created through a long exposure, the pair of photographs turn Wright and the moon into echoed forms. Instead of a singular snapshot in time, what is represented is an extended moment; the moon traces its passage in the sky and Wright’s eyes flicker, reflecting light back to us. The intentionality of the work’s presentation, opening like the pages of a book, can only truly be appreciated in-situ.”
This year the judging panel consisted of Isobel Parker Philip, director of curatorial and collection at the National Portrait Gallery; José Da Silva, director of UNSW Galleries; and Pippa Milne, curator for PHOTO 2024.
The winning entry was chosen amongst 34 finalists, all of which are now on display in the National Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery until 3 October.
National Photographic Portrait Prize
National Portrait Gallery
22 June—3 October
Suggested Reading
65,000 Years brings truth telling to art history
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.
Jane O'Sullivan
Oslo Davis reimagines art terms
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.
Oslo Davis
The major exhibitions open in each capital city this summer
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.
Art Guide Australia
Poetic relations at the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art
Bringing together 70 artists from 30 countries, the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art fosters connections across cultures and borders, and translates cultural knowledge for the present day.
Steve Dow
Julie Mehretu and the new contemporary
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.
Courtney Kidd
Stranger than fiction: Magritte and Cao Fei
In two new exhibitions at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, René Magritte and Cao Fei speak to each other across cultures and eras about the way that perception can unsettle reality—and the places the real intersects with the surreal.