Concrete Playground's Ten Picks of the Archibald Prize

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A fashion designer activist, a Wagga Wagga community leader, an Oscar-winning documentary maker. They're the faces Australia's gasbagging about with the Art Gallery of New South Wales’s annual portraiture competition, the Archibald Prize, drawing crowds for another year.

The AGNSW handed out the blue ribbon (and a cheeky $100,000) to Newcastle artist Nigel Milsom, who nabbed the Archibald Prize for his haunting, Edgar Allan Poe-like portrait of barrister Charles Waterstreet. After 832 entries, this year, these 47 Archibald finalists are the top tier of artists trying to make us wake up and pay attention (whether for great or WTF reasons) to Australia’s big ol’ faces. But there’s a few standout favourites for us this year, which you can see at the AGNSW’s exhibition until September 27.

There’s Carla Fletcher’s striking portrait of Australian fashion designer Jenny Kee, Paul Ryan's Noah Taylorfest, Adam Alcorn’s sharply figurative portrait of Sydney comedian Alice Fraser, Peter Churcher's saddeningly beautiful portrait of his mother Betty, and Stewart MacFarlane’s strange portrait of Cory Bernardi holding some kind of whip. It's hard to pick a handful, but we can't stop staring at these Archibald finalists.

SALLY ROSS — EVA

This gorgeous portrait of Academy and Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Eva Orner (Taxi to the Dark Side) wouldn’t be out of place on the cover of Frankie. But there’s nothing twee about this kickass human rights crusader, whose upcoming Australian-focused doco Asylum is sure to ruffle a few feathers. “In our image-saturated world I would love to see less selfies, gourmet meals, renovations and lingerie models blowing kisses, and more pictures of women, humans like Eva Orner," says Ross.

ADAM HILL (AKA BLAK DOUGLAS) — SMOKE AND MIRRORS (UNCLE MAX EULO)

When Adam Hill, or as he's better known, Blak Douglas, first saw Aboriginal cultural entertainer Uncle Max Eulo at an Ashfield launch, he'd never forget it. "His introductory catch phrase was: 'My name’s Uncle Max Eulo and I’m from Bourke, where the crows fly backwards'." Uncle Max can be seen at most Indigenous events, cleansing the setting with his coolamon and smoking gum leaves — "Where there’s smoke, there’s Uncle Max." A largely self-taught artist from Dharug Country (Blacktown), Hill is the first identified Dhungatti Aboriginal artist to have been selected as a finalist in the Archibald Prize with his pop art-inspired portrait of Uncle Max. Kudos.

CARLA FLETCHER — JENNY KEE

A pioneer of Australian fashion and an internationally-acclaimed artist in her own right, Jenny Kee is officially one of the most kickass humans on the planet. Fatefully heading along to the launch of Kee’s A new beginning 2015 knitwear collection, Carla Fletcher was struck by the designer's bold, in-face use of colour — something she's obviously brought into this Archibald portrait. For the sitting, Fletcher stayed with Kee in her Blue Mountains studio, going on bushwalks, collecting ochre for the portrait and meditating at the base of waterfalls — how all artistic connections should start.

MITCH CAIRNS — PETER POWDITCH

Mitch Cairns' genuinely stunning portrait of renowned painter Peter Powditch almost took the top prize. This year's Archibald runner-up, Cairns' work was the result of a visit to the Gallery's recent Pop to popism exhibition, where the artist saw Powditch’s Seascape II 1969. Cairns headed to Powditch's NSW north coast home and painted the celebrated artist in his studio. The result is a wonderfully elegant, angular portrait evoking Powditch's own modernist style, one of the most stop-you-in-your-tracks works of the finalists.

ADAM ALCORN — ALICE FRASER

An ex-academic, ex-corporate lawyer comedian with a Masters degree in English Literature from Cambridge, sold-out shows at Edinburgh and Melbourne International Comedy Festival, and her own podcast Tea with Alice, Alice Fraser is one of Sydney's secret comedy weapons. Painted by her buddy Adam Alcorn, Fraser's portrait is both figurative and minimal, praised by Leigh Sales in her Archibald Twitter review for having a "wonderfully arresting face".

SOPHIA HEWSON — DELIVERED

One of the most confronting Archibald portraits this year, Sophia Hewson's self portrait opens up a dialogue on female self-objectification. Paying tribute to different methods of pornography, Hewson’s self portrait came from one of her Melbourne public performance works, in which she intentionally objectified herself as a constructive means for women to claim back ownership of their bodies and reforge their identity in a patriarchal value system. "I can exhibit my sexuality without it amounting to my sexual availability."

KIM LEUTWYLER — START THE RIOT

Activist, designer, model and found of the fashion label and youth empowerment project House of Riot, Ollie Henderson is a bit of a boss. Using fashion as her weapon of choice, this 26-year-old has started more productive conversations about social change in Australia than many politicians could ever hope to. Kim Leutwyler, who typically creates paintings of LGBTQI-identified and queer-allied women, has rendered her buddy Henderson both figuratively and in abstract form, using the same broad brushstrokes as her globally celebrated 'Start the Riot' t-shirts and giving a rather beautifully complex identity to the activist and feminist member of the LGBTQI community.

PAUL RYAN — THIRTEEN NOAHS

It's almost physically impossible to not enjoy thirteen renderings of actor Noah Taylor's face. Made even better? When they're painted over curiosities found in junk shops and some of Paul Ryan’s very early works. Ryan, who grew up watching Taylor on the big and small screen, is represented by the same gallery as the actor/artist, Olsen Irwin. They met, and down the track Ryan decided to paint Taylor for the Archibald, referring to the actor's face as "so interesting it practically paints itself." The thirteen Noahs are all depictions of Taylor as a fictional character in fictional films, from Noah the mysterious figure in Murders at the lake, to Noah as a black American pimp in Hawaiian hustle, and Noah in the Australian classic Death on the Murray. This is inevitably one of the most sneakily Instagrammed works in the exhibition.

TONY CURRAN — LUKE

Sitting for hours for a portrait can be tedious business, often resulting in a stiff, unnatural representation of your subject as staged and uppity as a 17th century Spanish royal court portrait. When Tony Curran wanted to paint Wagga Wagga community leader and Museum of the Riverina manager Luke Grealy, he let Tony roam. "For this portrait, I invited Luke to move freely while I continued to draw and redraw him. I didn’t want to try to capture every aspect of his identity in this painting; instead I wanted to give the sense that the self can continue to grow into new manifestations." The result? An identity both in flux and measured, the perfect rendering of a man who's lived multiple lives as a commercial radio presenter, a city council executive, an electrician and even a masseur.

PETER CHURCHER — THE LAST PORTRAIT

It's impossible not be moved by Peter Churcher's beautiful portrait of his mother, Betty, who ran the National Gallery of Australia from 1990 to 1997 and was a highly regarded painter and arts administrator. This was the final portrait Churcher made of his mother before she passed away at 84. "Painted just weeks before her death, in her bedroom where she died, I was at the foot of her bed with canvas and easel and my mother lying there, her one still-good eye carefully studying my every move," says Churcher. "I was ordered to turn the canvas around frequently and comments were made such as: “Now, if you tinker around with that mouth I’ll kill you!” I did my best to obey."

(DIS)HONORABLE MENTION: CORY BERNARDI BY STEWART MACFARLANE

Is that a whip? A riding crop? We're not sure, but we've stood perplexed in front of Stewart MacFarlane's portrait of Liberal South Australian senator Cory Bernardi ever since the Archibald finalists were revealed. Author of The Conservative Revolution and perpetual utterer of WTF statements, Bernardi's been rendered quite lovingly (and quite beautifully) by MacFarlane, who "relates to his honesty and strength in the face of derision." There's two sides to every story, we know, and MacFarlane gives the man who continually links same-sex marriage to polygamy and bestiality heaving praise. "He is no coward. He is approachable, intelligent and charming." Righto.

See the Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales until September 27. For more info or to book tickets, head over here.