9 May 2025
Julie Fragar wins Archibald Prize 2025 with portrait of artist Justene Williams
The Art Gallery of New South Wales is pleased to announce that Brisbane artist Julie Fragar has won the Archibald Prize 2025 and $100,000 for her portrait of fellow Brisbane artist and colleague Justene Williams, titled Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene), which depicts Williams as an ‘active master of a multiverse of characters and events’.
A four-time Archibald Prize finalist, Fragar broke into tears when Art Gallery of New South Wales director Maud Page phoned this morning to deliver the news that her work had been selected as the winner from 57 finalist works.
Responding to the win, Fragar said: ‘You work your whole career imagining this might happen one day. Thinking back to myself as a 17 year old showing up at the Sydney College of the Arts – a kid from country New South Wales – it’s incredible to think I have won the Archibald Prize. Portrait painting wasn’t taken as seriously in the 1990s as it is today. I have always regarded the Archibald Prize as a place that understood the value of portraiture.
‘To be the winner of the Archibald Prize is a point of validation. It means so much to have the respect of my colleagues at the Art Gallery. It doesn’t get better than that.’
Speaking of her sitter, she said: ‘Justene is incredible. I feel very fortunate that she allowed me to do this portrait. There is nobody like her. The work is a reflection on the experience of making art to deadlines, and the labour and love of being a mother.’
‘Flagship Mother’ in the title comes from Justene’s recent endurance performance in New Zealand titled Making do rhymes with poo, which was about the labour of ‘getting by’. Fragar and Williams work together at the Queensland College of Art and Design, where Fragar is the head of painting and Williams is the head of sculpture.
This is the 15th time the Archibald Prize has been awarded to a woman, and Fragar is the 13th woman to win since its inception in 1921.
Speaking of the winning work, Art Gallery director Maud Page said: ‘Here are two of Australia’s great artists in conversation about what matters most to them. Julie Fragar has a sumptuous ability to transcend reality and depict her subjects technically but also psychologically. Justene Williams is a larger-than-life character, a performer – cacophonous and joyous. In this work, she is surrounded by her own artworks and, most important of all, her daughter Honore as a tiny figure atop a sculpture. It speaks to me as a powerful rendition of the juggle some of us perform as mothers and professionals.’
The Archibald Prize and the Wynne Prize winners are decided by the Art Gallery’s Board of Trustees. Board president Michael Rose congratulated all the finalists in the 2025 Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes and commended the high standard of work this year.
‘Julie Fragar’s work is a portrait for our time. It’s a highly accomplished formal painting that is also incredibly contemporary. The work is vibrant, outward-facing and optimistic, and we were captivated by its energy,’ said Rose.
The Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2025 exhibition and the Young Archie competition are generously supported by presenting partner ANZ.
Mark Whelan, Group Executive, Institutional at ANZ said: ‘The Archibald Prize is one Australia’s most coveted art awards and we congratulate Julie Fragar on this prestigious honour. As a proud supporter of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes exhibition for 16 years, ANZ celebrates the incredible depth of artistic talent showcased through these distinguished prizes.’
Jude Rae wins the Wynne Prize 2025 for Pre-dawn sky over Port Botany container terminal
Sydney artist Jude Rae has won the Wynne Prize 2025 and $50,000 for her painting Pre-dawn sky over Port Botany container terminal, depicting an immense sky underlaid with the rust reds of impending sunrise.
Rae’s painting was selected from 758 entries for the Wynne Prize in 2025 and is one of 52 finalists on display at the Art Gallery.
For three-time Wynne finalist Jude Rae, this view towards Sydney’s Botany Bay, or Kamay, is laden with its history as the birthplace of colonial Australia. Her sightline from the inner Sydney suburb of Redfern to the site of Captain Cook’s first landing in Australia was also a traditional corridor used by Aboriginal people to access the bay.
After receiving the news that she had won the Wynne Prize 2025, Rae said: ‘I certainly never expected to win. I grew up with the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes, with my dad entering. I’m honoured and very pleased.’
Speaking of the work, Rae said: ‘There is something compelling about the constantly flashing gantry lights and the floodlights blasting away in those hours just before dawn. I am up at various times and love to watch the pre-dawn light, when the sky is just starting to change colour. From my bathroom window on the fifth floor of my building, I have a clear view of that scene. There is no way to photograph it – it’s too subtle and too fleeting. It’s a big sky and we’re all really little.’
In addition to the Wynne Prize, Rae has been a finalist four times in the Archibald Prize (2014, 2019, 2021 and 2022) and was highly commended on all four occasions. She was also a finalist in the Sulman Prize 2021.
The Wynne Prize is Australia’s oldest art prize and is awarded annually for ‘the best landscape painting of Australian scenery in oils or watercolours or for the best example of figure sculpture by Australian artists’.
Gene A’Hern wins the Sulman Prize 2025 for Sky painting
Gene A’Hern has won the Sir John Sulman Prize 2025 and $40,000 for his work Sky painting, a bold, vibrant and gestural work that draws on his relationship to the Blue Mountains where he lives and works. This is A’Hern’s first time as a finalist in the Sulman Prize, with his winning work selected from among 30 finalists.
Speaking of his win, A’Hern said: ‘The Art Gallery of New South Wales has played such a big role in the birth of my practice, as I have regularly spent time there. From a young age, I have held deep respect for the previous winners of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes. To be awarded the Sulman Prize is a great honour and I feel very humbled to stand alongside such talented Australian artists.
‘Painted with expansive movements to capture a sense of scale and colour, this painting unfolded as I immersed myself in skywatching, while reflecting on the ceremonial choreography of the surrounding environment. It conveys a sensation of nature’s gestures, composed to resonate from within, translating an omnipresence that comes from dust and returns to dust.
‘The work draws on charged memories – birds singing in harmony, branches sighing in the wind, the closing curtain of the setting sun, all forming a living landscape that I breathe with and through. For me, the sky and the Blue Mountains intertwine and reveal themselves as a place of origin, deep memory and belonging.’
The Sir John Sulman Prize is awarded to the best subject painting, genre painting or mural project by an Australian artist and is judged by a guest artist each year. This year’s Sulman Prize judge is Sydney artist Elizabeth Pulie, who selected A’Hern’s winning work from a record 732 entries for the Sulman in 2025.
‘Gene A’Hern’s work is an unselfconscious dedication to line and colour – its almost excessive celebration of the materiality of paint manifesting a certain energy that repeatedly attracted my attention throughout the judging process,’ said Pulie.
All finalists in Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2025 will be exhibited at the Art Gallery from Saturday 10 May to Sunday 17 August 2025.
Following the exhibition at the Art Gallery, Archibald Prize 2025 finalist works will tour to six venues across New South Wales and Victoria, offering audiences outside Sydney the opportunity to see the finalist portraits up close and personal.
Wynne Prize 2025 finalist works will tour to four venues in regional New South Wales. The Wynne Prize regional tour is proudly supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW’s Blockbusters Funding initiative.
For tickets and more information, please visit the Art Gallery website.
NOTE TO EDITORS:
As of 2025, 13 women have now won the Archibald Prize, a total of 15 times. 13 women artists have won once, and two women artists have won twice: Judy Cassab (1960 and 1967) and Del Kathryn Barton (2008 and 2013).
Assets for media
Image and video assets are available for media use via the download links below:
- Download images of ARCHIBALD PRIZE 2025 finalists
- Download images of WYNNE PRIZE 2025 finalists
- Download images of SULMAN PRIZE 2025 finalists
- Download exhibition installation images
- Download B-roll footage winning artworks (FOR BROADCAST USE ONLY)
- Download B-roll footage of exhibition views (FOR BROADCAST USE ONLY)
For media enquiries and interviews, please contact:
Sarah Shields
Acting head of strategic communications
+61 408 283 091
sarah.shields@ag.nsw.gov.au
James Ricupito
Communications specialist
+61 466 894 044
james.ricupito@ag.nsw.gov.au
Ella Beer
Communications advisor
+61 420 236 608
ella.beer@ag.nsw.gov.au