Amos Gebhardt’s Alexis with moon has won this year’s National Photographic Portrait Prize.
The two-part image, or diptych, shows award winning Waanyi author Alexis Wright looking up to the sky, visible by only the light of the moon.
Gebhardt said their choice to pair the author with the celestial body was a deliberately symbolic one.
“As Alexis is a storyteller who dares to imagine the future cosmologies in these dystopian times, I sought to pair her with the elemental power of the moon, a symbol of dreams and illumination,” they said.
“Reflected in Alex’s eyes are tracings of the moon itself created through subtle movement of the human body in dialogue with the Earth’s rotation.”
Wright won the Miles Franklin Award for her 2006 novel Carpentaria, and is also the first writer to win the Stella prize twice.
Gebhardt said they wanted to honour Wright as a “luminous literary figure” and a “figure of wisdom” with the diptych.
“Comparing Alexis with this elemental power of the moon was important to me, and so I wanted to be very pure about only filming her under moonlight and only using that light source in quite a singular way,” they said.
“Because of that you get to see this little reflection, this little mapping of the moon on her eye, which to me just connects her and this celestial body — and all our bodies I suppose — with the moon.”
National Portrait Gallery (NPG) curatorial and collection director Isobel Parker Philip said the judges were captivated by the “sparse yet powerful diptych” that is Gebhardt’s work.
“Created through a long exposure and lit only by the moon, the work metaphorically connects to ideas of the cosmos and collapses our expectations of a photographic snapshot,” she said.
“Here, Wright and the moon become echoed forms, compared like open pages of a book.”
As the winner, Gebhardt takes home a $30,000 cash prize from the NPG, as well as $20,000 worth of Canon equipment.
‘Energetic and unexpected’ painting wins 2024 Darling Portrait Prize
Artist Noel McKenna has taken home the $75,000 Darling Portrait Prize for his painting William Nuttall with horses in field.
The Darling Portrait Prize, awarded every two years to a painted portrait, was established to honour NPG founding patron L Gordon Darling AC CMG by celebrating art that explores the evolving notion of Australian identity.
McKenna’s winning work depicts his long-time gallerist William ‘Bill’ Nuttall in what Ms Parker Philip described as an “energetic and unexpected portrait”.
“The subject shares the work with the animals and the landscape,” she said.
“It is joyous in its execution and demonstrates the skill of an established Australian artist whose practice is assured in every way.”
McKenna has previously won the Sulman Prize in 1994, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales Trustees’ prize for watercolour five times.
Several of his paintings from The Popular Pet Show featured at the NPG in 2016.
Ms Parker Philip said all of this year’s prize winners cultivate “not a logic, but a sense of atmosphere and ambience”.
“What’s emerged as the recurring beat in both of the prizes this year is a sense of the intimate, and the introspective,” she said.
“There’s a pensiveness to many of the works on show, they’re tender and thoughtful in who they depict — many of them mentors, fellow creatives, as well as close family members, and the self.”
‘Bittersweet’ reunion depicted in handlers’ prize
Earlier in the week, before the prize winners were announced, the NPG team in charge of looking after and hanging exhibits picked their favourite works for both the awards.
Shelley Xue’s portrait 阿谊 (ah Yi) of Xue’s mother following a three-week visit after years apart, was the team’s favourite work for the National Photographic Portrait Prize.
“This beautiful and poignant photograph articulates the complex and bittersweet feelings of time and opportunities lost with the joy and excitement for future intimacies,” the team said.
Nena Salbir’s Self portrait on washcloth was the team’s pick for the Darling Portrait Prize.
The work was created by pressing a ‘painted face’ onto cotton.
Salbir describes it as being reminiscent of a Victorian death mask, but also an acknowledgement of the self portrait so many of us paint onto our own faces each day.
The team said they were struck by Salobir’s ability to capture the ephemerality of a moment in time.
“There is an inventiveness in how Salobir up-ends our expectation of portrait painting, imprinting herself literally and figuratively onto the work,” they said.