To be or not to be … who will make the cut to sit for their portrait?
It’s the time of year when artists in Brisbane decide who they will immortalise in this year’s Brisbane Portrait Prize – and who they won’t.
It’s that time of year again … when artists are planning who they will paint or photograph or digitally manipulate for this year’s Brisbane Portrait Prize.
Meanwhile, artists’ subjects are feeling chuffed if they have been asked to sit while others are feeling grumpy about being snubbed.
This is the way it goes with portrait prizes and Brisbane Portrait Prize is now one of the country’s most prestigious.
It was started due to frustration with the southern-centric Archibald Prize. People wondered why so few Queenslanders ever made the list of finalists for that Sydney-based prize. But figuring that we should not get mad but, rather, get even, founder Anna Reynolds and her supporters did just that.
The Brisbane Portrait Prize has just announced its lineup of judges and opened entries for portrait submissions for 2025, so we are off and running.
Now in its seventh year, the Brisbane Portrait Prize has handed out more than $500,000 in prize money and received 3698 entries.
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Brisbane Portrait Prize chair Anna Reynolds is again delighted with the quality of the judges.
“Judging is a tough job that has been taken on by some of the most experienced curators and art gallery directors in the country, and this year is no exception,” she says. “Judges bring all their experience and expertise to the task. They can always justify their decisions, but they are not always popular. So, we thank all the judges for stepping up to the plate.”
No, they are not always popular at all, but this is par for the course with judging. I recall a judge in previous years pointing out that it was best to have someone ready to collect you (in a car with the engine running) after the main prizes are announced.
This year the judges panel consists of a chief judge – Jason Smith, the newly minted director of the Art Gallery of South Australia – and two finalists judges – Christine Clark, head of curatorial and collections, Museum of Brisbane; and Indigenous artist and designer Francoise Lane, a former artistic director of the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair. (She is a descendant of the Meriam and Kaurareg peoples of Zenadth Kes, who lives on Yindiji Country in Far North Queensland.)
After the finalists judges have done their thing, Smith chooses the overall winner of the $50,000 Lord Mayor’s Prize and other major prizes. He’s a brave man.
Clark wants to reassure artists that the process of choosing the finalists is rigorous.
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“We spend two days looking at the entries which have been submitted and make sure each and every one gets considered properly,” she says. “In my experience with this and other prizes, the Brisbane Portrait Prize process is very considered and credible.”
There is $80,000 up for grabs across multiple categories
The Next Gen category judges this year are Jenna Baldock (a Queensland-based curator) and Elisabeth Findlay (a professor of art theory at Queensland College of Art and Design at Griffith University).
There is $80,000 up for grabs across multiple categories, which gives artists numerous opportunities to win something.
Generally, artists consider it a win just to be chosen as a finalist because then their work gets hung in the finalists’ exhibition.
For the prize’s first few years this exhibition has been held at Brisbane Powerhouse, but last year it moved to the State Library of Queensland where it drew big enthusiastic crowds. And it looked spectacular in the main gallery in a more focused setting, where the art really popped.
The winner last year was young local artist Imogen Corbett, with her portrait of fellow artist Natalya Hughes.
Chief judge for 2024 was Bree Pickering, director of the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, who described Corbett’s winning work as a “joyful, approachable and well-executed painting … at once a portrait of the sitter, also an artist, and a commentary on ideas of femininity and work”.
“The work speaks to the relationship between the artist and sitter, of scholar-teacher,” said Pickering. “So it’s a portrait of respect and the generative exchange of ideas between artists, which connects to a long history of portraiture and art making in which artists grow and work together.”
Entries close July 1, finalists will be announced September 6, with winners announced on September 19. The Finalists Exhibition will be held at the State Library of Queensland from September 20 to November 9, which gives everyone time to see what has become one of the cultural events of the year.