The Archibald Prize in Tweed

The Archibald Prize is a painting competition for portraits of a “notable Australian”, so there are lots of well-known faces here (although, plenty are unrecognisable.)  In the year following the original exhibition in the Galley of New South Wales the finalist painting travel around regional galleries across Australia, which is how I get to see them.

This is the exhibition in the Tweed Regional Gallery:

As always, there’s plenty here to like and not like.  My favourite painting is Craig Ruddy’s portrait of Bruce Pascoe, author of Dark Emu, a book about Aboriginal land use and culture, which I have enjoyed reading, among others.

Apart from having a connection to the painting through Bruce Pascoe’s book, I like the vibrant colour and active surface of the painting.  Here’s a close up of the eyes:

It’s almost like a giant pastel drawing.

I also liked Angus McDonald’s painting of Behrouz Boochani, an Iranian Journalist who was a refugee detained on Manus Island by the Australian government for six years, before being granted asylum in New Zealand.

This painting is quite photographic, which is not a strong point in a painting for me, but I like this one for its subject’s steady, front-on, challenging gaze.  Its realism comes into effect particularly when the painting is in your peripheral vision and your deep instincts know that someone is staring at you. 

This is Claus Stangl’s painting of L-Fresh The Lion, a hip hop artist:   

I like the formal cameo pose and the big areas of contrasting simplified colour, especially contrasted against the extremely textural beard.

This is Julie Fragar’s painting of artist Richard Bell:

I like this one for the great capture of the subtly of the facial expression, which makes you feel that the subject is trying to determine who you are.

I only like this one because I housesat a couple of dachshunds in 2018, and they were such great and interesting little dogs!

This is a dual portrait, by the way – both the man and the dog are named as its subjects.  In the painting notes David is described as a performance artist, and Teena, the dog, is listed as his collaborator – so equal billing in the performances, too!

None of my favourites won the Archibald Prize in 2020; the winner was Vincent Namatjira’s painting of Adam Goodes (an Australian football player).

I find this painting clichéd and poorly executed, but maybe that’s just because I don’t like football!  Of course, the painting isn’t about football – it’s about Adam Goodes’ stand against the racist treatment he received while playing football.

The Tweed Regional Gallery also had an exhibition of Arthur Boyd’s work.  These are my favourites from that exhibition:

The Tweed Regional Gallery is on the rural outskirts of the small country town Murwillumbah.  The town is within a vast ancient volcanic caldera, with Wollumbin-Mount Warning as its central peak which is surrounded by a ring of mountains and ranges, which all provide spectacular views from the gallery.  This is the view of Wollumbin-Mount Warning:

This is the view of the surrounding ring of mountains – this section of mountains defines the border between New South Wales and Queensland:  

Within or just outside of this view are O’Reilly’s in Lamington National Park, Binna Burra, Springbrook, and the Natural Bridge – all well-known Gold Coast hinterland destinations.  The Tweed River is in the foreground.

If you enjoyed this blog post, you can find related posts under these headings:

Australia, arts and crafts, New South Wales

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